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LIBRARY 

OF THK 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 

01 RT OK 

y *,M,Q,A,OF U.C. 

Accession 101786 C/&lt;KS 



TS AT 



i: : ~ ~ ~ i ^ - "-- . r ^- r ." : J ^ : _ : 






SEVEN STORIES, 



BA SEME XT AXD ATTIC 









TY ; 




XE W-YORK : 
CHARLES SCRIBNER 

:^:_ 



ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 
CHARLES SCKIBNER, 

In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



JOHN P. TROW, 
PRINTER, 8TEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER, 

46, 48, & 50 Greene St., New York. 






DEDICATORY LETTER: 



To Dr. Fordyce Barker. 

MY DEAR DOCTOR : 

THIS book of Seven Stories, before which I infcribe 
your name, is made up from thofe fpecial remi- 
nifcences of travel, which after a lapfe of ten years hang 
strongeft in my mind. I think there are fome paflably good 
things in it ; and fome, I fear, which are not fo good. Thus 
far, it is unlike your practice, of which the foundness is 
uniform. 

At beft, I count the book only a little bundle of fagots 
which I have fet to crackle away under the kettle, where I 



101/86 



vl DEDICATORY LETTER. 

hope Tome day to cook a more favory mels. And though 
there be not much in this which mall flick to the ribs, I 
hope there is nothing that will breed in any man an indi 
gestion. I think you count light food fometimes a good di 
etary ; and unlefs I am miftaken, I have known you, on 
occasions, to fmother a pill in a fyllabub. And if I have 
tried to drop here and there, in the courfe of thefe pages, a 
nugget of wholefome fentiment, I hope it may prove as good 
a tonic as any of your iodides. 

I feel reafonably certain that the charge for it will be 
fmaller : but on this fcore, I cannot fpeak pofitively, fmce 
your generofity always keeps me your debtor. 

Very truly your friend, 

DONALD G. MITCHELL. 
EDGEWOOD, 

April, 1864. 



CONTENTS 



BASEMENT: 

SERVING FOR IXTKODUCTIOX, .... 

FIRST STORY: 

WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN, . . . . .39 

SECOND STORY: 

ACCOUNT or A CONSULATE, . . . . . .69 

THIRD STORY: 

THE PETIT SorLrgH, .... . 117 



riii CONTENTS. 

FOURTH STORY: 

THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING, ..... 147 

FIFTH STORY: 

THE CABRIOLET, . . . . . . .179 

SIXTH STORY: 

THE COUNT PESARO, . . . . . . .206 

SE VENTH STOR Y: 

EMILE ROQUE, ........ 249 

ATTIC: 

UNDER THE HOOF, . . . . . . .293 



BASEMENT: 



SERVING FOR INTRODUCTION 




BASEMENT: 



Serving for Introduction. 

IN an out of the way corner of my library are five 
plethoric little note-books of Travel. One of them, 
and it is the earliest, is bound in smart red leather, and 
has altogether a dapper British air ; its paper is firm 
and evenly lined, and it came a great many years ago 
(I will not say how many) out of a stationer s shop 
upon Lord street in Liverpool. A second, in stiff 
boards, marbled, and backed with muslin, wears a 
soldierly primness in its aspect that always calls to mind 
the bugles, and the drums, and the brazen helmets of 
Berlin where, once upon a time, I added it to my 
little stock of travelling companions. A third, in limp 
morocco, bought under the Hotel de VEcu at Geneva, 
shows a great deal of the Swiss affectation of British 
wares, and has borne bravely the hard knapsack ser 
vice, and the many stains which belonged to those glo 
rious mountain tramps that live again whenever I turn 



4 SEVEN STORIES. 

over its sweaty pages. Another is tattered, dingy the 
paper frail, and a half of its cover gone ; yet I think it 
is a fair specimen of what the Roman stationers could 
do, in the days when the Sixteenth Gregory was Pope. 
The fifth and last, is coquettish, jaunty as prim as the 
Prussian, limp like the Genevese, and only less solid 
than the English : it is all over French ; and the fellows 
to it may very likely have served a tidy grisette to write 
down her tale of finery, or some learned member of the 
Institute to record his note-takings in the Imperial 
Library. 

I dare not say how often these little conjurers of 
books wean me away from all graver employment, 
and tempt me to some ramble among the highlands 
of Scotland, or the fastnesses of the Apennines. I 
do not know but that this refreshment of the old sen 
timent of travel, through the first unstudied jottings- 
down, is oftentimes more delightful than a repeated 
visit. 

To-night by a word, by a fragment of a line, 
dropped upon my little Genevese book, the peak of 
Mont Blanc cleaves the sky for the first time in all my 
range of vision ; the clear, up-lifted mountain of white, 
just touched with the rosy hues of approaching twilight 
the blue brothers of nearer mountains shouldering up 
the monarch the dark, low fir forests fringing all the 
valley up which I look a shining streak of road that 



JNTR OD UCTION. 5 

beckons me on to the Chamouni worship the river (is 
it the Arve ?) glistening and roaring a great song all 
this my little book summons, freshly, and without dis 
turbing object. But if I repeat the visit, the inevitable 
comparisons present themselves. " Aye, this is it ; but 
the atmosphere is not altogether so clear, or the ap 
proach is not so favorable ; " and so, for mere vanity s 
sake, you must give a fellow-passenger the benefit of 
your previous knowledge : as if all the " le void !" and 
" le voila!" were not the merest impertinences in such 
august presence ! No : it is sadly true perhaps pleas 
antly true that there are scenes of which no second 
sight will enlarge the bounds wherein imagination may 
disport itself, for which no second sight will create an 
atmosphere of more glorious rarity. 

To-night, this tattered little Roman journal, by 
merest mention of the greasy, cushioned curtain, under 
whose corner I first urged my way into the great aisle 
of St. Peter s brings up the awed step with which I 
sidled down the marble pavement, breathing that soft 
atmosphere, perfumed with fading incense oppressed, 
as by a charm, with the thought of that genius which 
had conjured this miracle of architecture ; and oppress 
ed (I know not how) by a thought of that Papal hier 
archy which by such silent show of pomp and power, 
had compelled the service of millions. And if I go 
back again, all this delightfully vague estimate of its 



6 SEVEN STORIES. 

grandeur cannot renew itself ; the height is the same ; 
all the width is there ; those cherubs who hold the font 
are indeed giants ; but the aroma of first impressions 
is lost in a whirl of new comparisons and estimates ; 
is the Baldachino indeed as high as they say it is ? Is 
St. Peter s toe, of a truth worn away with the invete 
rate kissings ? Every piece of statuary, every glowing 
blazon of mosaic compels an admeasurement of the old 
fancy with the object itself. All the charming, intoxi 
cating generality of impression is preyed upon, and ab 
sorbed piecemeal by specialities of inference, or of ob 
servation ; while here, in the quiet of my room, with no 
distracting object in view, I blunder through the disor 
derly characters of my note-book with all the old glow 
upon me, and start to life again that first, rich, Roman 
dream. 

And the same is true of all lesser things : There was 
once a peasant girl, somewhere in Normandy, with de- 
liciously quaint muslin head-dress, and cheeks like the 
apricots she sold, a voice that rippled like a song ; and 
yet, with only a half line of my blotted note-book, she 
springs into all that winsome, coquettish life which 
sparkled then and there in her little Norman town ; but 
if I were to leave the pleasant cheatery of my book, 
and travel never so widely, all up and down through 
Normandy, I could never meet with such a blithe young 
peasant again. 



INTR OD UCTION. 7 

By one or two of the old pen-marks, I am reminded 
of a burly beggar, encountered in my first stroll through 
Liverpool. He was without any lower limbs that I 
could discover, and was squatted upon the stone flag 
ging of St. Nicholas church-yard, where he asked 
charity with the authoritative air of a commander of 
an army. And I recall with a blush the admiring 
spirit with which, as a fresh and timid traveller, I 
yielded my pence to his impetuous summation ; and how 
I reckoned his masterful manner fairly typical of the 
sturdy British empire, which squatted upon its little 
islands of the sea, demanded in virtue only of its big 
head and shoulders tribute of all the world. I do not 
believe that such imaginative exaltation of feeling could 
overcome me upon a repeated visit ; or if it did, that it 
would beget as then the very romanticism of charity. 

There was a first-walk scored down in the red- 
covered book along a brook-side in the forest near to 
Blair- Athol in the north of Scotland, in the course of 
which all the songs of Burns that I had ever known, or 
heard, came soughing to my ear through the fir-branches, 
as if ploughmen in plaids had sung them ; but if I 
should go there again, I think the visionary plough 
men would sing no more ; and that I should be esti 
mating the growth of the larches, or wondering if the 
trout would rise briskly to a hackle ? 

I do not write thus, simply to iterate the stale tru- 



8 SEVEN STORIES. 

ism, that the delight and freshness of first impressions 
of travel, can never be renewed ; that we all know ; all 
enthusiasms have but one life, in the same mind. Con 
victions may be renewed, and gain strength and con 
sistency by renewal ; but those enthusiasms which find 
their life in exultant imaginative foray, can no more be 
twice entertained, than a foaming beaker of Mumm s 
Imperial can be twice drank. 

What I wish to claim for my spotty note-books, is 
that their cabalistic signs revive more surely and fresh 
ly the aroma of first impressions than any renewed 
visit could do. Therefore I cherish them. Time and 
time again, I take them down from their niche in my 
library, when no more serious work is in hand, and glide 
insensibly into their memories, the present slipping 
from me like a dream, and indulge in that delightful 
bewilderment at which I have hinted, and in which cities 
and mountains pile before me, as if I lived among them. 

It is true that the loose and disjointed wording in 
which I have scored down incidents or scenes of travel, 
would prove wholly uninteresting, if not absolutely 
unintelligible, to others. There are little catch-words, 
by the sight of which I may set a great river aflow, 
or build a temple ; there are others, that start a com 
pany of dead faces from their graves, or put me in the 
middle of a great whirl of masked figures who dance 
the night out to the music of Musard. And I must say 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

that I rather enjoy this symbolism of language, which 
individuates a man s private memories. WTio knows 
what cold, invidious eye may be scanning them some 
day ? 

Let me satisfy the reader s curiosity if I have suc 
ceeded in arousing any by a little sample. It is taken 
from my dapper-looking British note-book, and is dated 

"London, " (near twenty years ago), and runs 

thus: a Arrival night time sea of lights order 
clattering cab immense distances whither going ? 
Covent Garden no money wanderings American 
Prof. tight cloak Cornhill Post-office anxieties 
relief." 

Can the reader make anything of it ? If he cannot, 
I think that I can and will. It brings to mind the first 
approach to London, and all the eager wonder with 
which I came bowling down upon it at dusk : this side 
and that, I look for tokens of the great Babylon ; but 
the air is murky and dim, and it is past sunset ; still I 
look, peering through the gloom. At last, there can be 
no mistake ; a wilderness of lamps, far as I can see 
east and west fret the horizon with a golden line. 
On and on we hurtle over the rail, and always east 
and west the golden lamp-line of horizon stretches 
until we are fairly encircled by it, and the murky at 
mosphere has changed into a yellow canopy of smoke, 

under which of a sudden we halt, in London. 
1* 



10 SEVEN STORIES. 

There is order ; I remember that. There is some 
where a particular cab in a great line of cabs, of which 
I become presently the occupant, in virtue of the sys 
tem which seems to govern passengers, railways, sta 
tions, cabmen and all. There is a wilderness of streets, 
of shining shop-fronts, of silent, tall houses, of 
brother cabs, rattling our way rattling the contrary 
way ; there is a nicker of lanterns on a river, where 
steamers with checkered pipes go by like ghosts ; there 
is a plunge into narrow streets, and presently out we 
go into broad and dazzling ones ; on and on, we pass, 
by shops that show butchers stores, shops that are parti 
colored with London haberdashery, drug shops, shops 
with bonnets, shops with books, shops with bakers 
wares ; a long, bright clattering drive, it seems to me, 
before I am landed in Covent Garden square. 

Yet how well I remember under all the boyisli 
excitement of a first visit, there lay a covert embarrass 
ment and anxiety ; for by the most awkward of haps, I 
chanced upon that first night in London, to be nearly 
penniless. It is rather a sorry position to be in, 
at almost any time ; but for a young stranger, whose 
excitable brain is half addled by the throng of novel 
ties and of splendor, in the largest city of the world, 
and whose nearest familiar friends are three thousand 
miles away the money-less condition is awkward in 
deed. I had even cruel apprehensions that I should 



INTR OD UCTION. \ \ 

not be able to meet the demands of the cabman ; in 
these, however, I was fortunately mistaken ; and with 
six half-pence in my pocket I found myself for the first 
time a guest at a London inn. 

I had, indeed, ordered remittances to be sent me 
there, from the Continent ; but in due course of mail 
the reply could not arrive till next day. And who 
could tell what might happen to the mail ? If I had 
only placed a little curb upon my curiosity in the south 
ern counties, and not loitered as I did about Salisbury, 
and Stonehenge, and Winchester ! 

I awoke upon a murky morning in full sight of 
Covent Garden market ; and could I believe my eyes ? 
were strawberries on sale under this chilling March 
gloom ? I rang the bell, and sent my card below, with 
an inquiry for letters. 

No letters had come. 

I ate my breakfast nervously though the chops 
were done to a turn, and the muffins were even less 
leathern than usual. I spent the greater part of the day 
sauntering between Charing Cross, Temple Bar, and the 
River. I have no dislike to a good, wearisome walk ; 
most people, with only six half-pence in their pockets, 
have not. 

I kept my room during the evening (although Jenny 
Lind was figuring in the Somnambula on the next block) 
and in the morning, after mail-time, sent the servant 
down again with my card for letters. 



12 SEVEN STORIES. 

He returned very promptly, with the reply, " No 
letters this morning, Sir." 

" Ah ! " (and I think I crowded as much of hypoc 
risy into the expression, as ever man did.) 

The chops on this morning were even better than 
yesterday ; and the muffins were positively light ; I 
could have sworn they had been baked within the hour. 

As I sat ruminating over the grate, the thought 
struck me that I had possibly made an error in the ad 
dress left with the Paris banker. I can hardly tell 
why, but there seemed to me a sudden confusion in my 
mind between the names of Covent Garden and Corn- 
hill. Possibly I had ordered my letters addressed to 
Cornhill? I had, unfortunately, no memoranda to 
guide me : to one of these two localities I was sure that 
I had requested remittances to be directed. What if 
they were lying at No. 9 Cornhill? 

Everybody who has been in London knows that a 
crowded and weary walk lies between the two places ; 
but there were no pennies to be spared for the omnibus 
people, however cajolingly they might beckon. So I 
entered bravely upon the tramp : and who should I 
come upon half down Fleet street, under the shadow of 
St. Bride s, but my old Latin professor, whom I had 
seen last in the plank box that forms the dais in the re 
citation room of a quiet New England college. If 
Ergasilus (of the Capteivi whose humor the old gen- 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

tleman dearly loved) had stepped out of a haberdasher s 
shop, and confronted me -with talk about his chances of 
a prospective dinner, I could hardly have been more 
surprised. 

His white hair, his stooping figure, his cloak gath 
ered tightly about him, his keen eye, fairly dancing 
with boyish excitement all these formed a picture I 
can never forget. We passed a pleasant word or two 
of salutation, and of as quick adieux ; only words 
"verfece sine penu et pecunia" (and the old gentle 
man s alliterative rendering of it came back to me 
as I stood there penniless). 

After parting, I turned to watch him, as he thread 
ed his way along the Fleet street walk ; quick, ner 
vous, glancing everywhere ; if only our sleepy college 
cloisters could get a more frequent airing ! 

In an hour and a half thereafter, I found myself, 
utterly fagged, pacing up and down the sidewalk of 
Cornhill. I found a Number Nine. I made appeal 
after my missing letter at a huckster s shop on the 
street. 

They knew nothing of it. 

I next made application in a dark court of the rear. 

" There was niver a gintleman of that name lived 
here." 

I asked, in my innocence, u if the postman were in 
possession of such a letter, would he leave it ? " 



U SEVEN STORIES. 

" Not being a boording-house in coorse not." 

My next aim was to intercept the Cornhill postman 
himself. Fortunately, the British postmen are all des 
ignated by red cuffs and collars ; I made an eager rush 
at some three or four, whom I espied in the course of 
an hour or more of watch. They were all bound to 
other parts of the city. 

By this time I had an annoying sense of being con 
stantly under the eye of a tall policeman in the neigh 
borhood. I thought I observed him pointing me out, 
with an air of apprehension, to a comrade, whose beat 
joined his upon the corner of the next street. 

I had often heard of the willingness to communicate 
information on the part of the London police, and de 
termined to divert the man s suspicions (if he entertain 
ed any) by explaining my position. I thought he lis 
tened incredulously. However, he assured me very 
positively, that if I should see the Cornhill postman on 
his beat (which I might not for three hours to come) , 
he would deliver to me no letter, unless at the door to 
which it might be addressed, and then only unless I was 
an acknowledged inmate. 

He advised me to make inquiries at the General 
Post-office. 

Under his directions, I walked, wearily, to the Gen 
eral Post-office. One may form some idea of the Gen 
eral Post-office of London by imagining three or four 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

of our Fifth Avenue reservoirs placed side by side, 
flanked with Ionic columns, topped with attics, and 
pierced through by an immense hall, on either side of 
which are doors and traps innumerable. 

I entered this hall, in which hundreds were moving 
about like bees one to this door, and one to another 
and all of them with a most enviable rapidity and pre 
cision of movement (myself, apparently, being the only 
lost or doubtful one), and read, with a vain bewilder 
ment, the numerous notices of Ship for India Mails 
here close at 3.15 Packages over a pound at the 
next window, left All newspapers mailed at this 
window must be in wrappers Charge on Sydney let 
ters raised twopence Bombay mail closes at two, 
this day Stamps only. 

Fluttering about for a while, in a sad state of trepi 
dation, I made a bold push for an open window, where 
an active gentleman had just mailed six letters for Bom 
bay, and began " Please, Sir, can you tell me about 
the Cornhill postman ? " 

" Know nothing about him ! " and slap went the 
window. 

I next made an advance to the newspaper trap 
rapped open flew the door : "I wish to inquire," said 
I, " about a letter " 

" Next window to left ! " and click went the trap. 

I marched with some assurance to the window on 



16 SEVEN STORIES. 

the left : the same pantomime was gone through. " I 
want to know," I began, more boldly, " about a letter 
directed to Cornhill." 

" Know nothing about it, Sir ; this isn t the place, 
you know." 

"And pray where is the place, if you please?" 
(This seemed a very kindly man.) 

" Oh, dear ! well, I should say, now, the place 
was let me see over the way somewhere. It s City, 
you know." 

I thanked him ; indeed I had no time to do more, 
for the window was closed. 

I marched over the way that is, to the opposite 
side of the hall. I rapped at a new trap : click ! it 
flew open. " I wish to inquire," said I, " about a let 
ter which the Cornhill postman may have taken by ac 
cident " 

" Oh may have taken : better find out if he really 
did, you know ; for if he didn t, you see, it s no use, 
you know, t inquire." And click ! the trap closed. 

How to find out now if he really did ? If I could 
only see the Cornhill postman, who, from the nature of 
his trust, could hardly be very officious, I might hope at 
least for some information. My eyes fell at this junc 
ture upon a well-fed porter, in royal livery, who was 
loitering about the great entrance-gates of the establish 
ment, and seemed to be a kind of civic beadle. 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

I ventured an appeal to him about the probable 
whereabouts of the Cornhill postman. 

" Oh, Corn ill postm n ; dear me ! I should say, 
now, p r aps he might be down to the pay-office. That s 
to the right, out o the yard, down a halley second 
flight o igh steps, like." 

I went out of the yard, and down the alley, and ap 
plied, as directed, at the second flight of steps. Right 
for once ; it was the pay-office. 

" Was the Cornhill postman there ? " 

" He was not." 

" Where would I probably find him? " 

" He was paid off, with the rest, every Saturday 
morning at nine o clock precisely." 

It was now Tuesday : I had allowed myself on this 
occasion, only a week for London. My anticipations of 
an enjoyable visit were not high. 

I returned once more to the communicative porter. 
I think I touched my hat in preface of my second ap 
plication (you will remember that I was fresh from the 
Continent): "You see," said he, " they goes to the 
stributing office, and all about, and it s ard to say ajust 
where he might be ; might be to Corn ill poss bly ; 
might not be, you know ; might be twixt here and 
there ; stributing office is to the left third court, first 
flight, door to right." 

I made my way to the distributing office ; it seemed 



18 SEVEN STORIES. 

a c likely place to find the man I was in search of. I 
found the door described by my stout friend, the porter, 
and entered very boldly. It opened upon an immense 
hall, resembling a huge church, with three tiers of gal 
leries running around the walls, along which I saw 
scores of postmen, passing and repassing, in what seem 
ed interminable confusion. I had scarce crossed the 
threshold when I was encountered by an official of some 
sort, who very brusquely demanded my business. I ex 
plained that I was in search of the Cornhill postman. 

" This is no place to seek him, Sir ; he comes here 
for his letters, and is off directly. No strangers are al 
lowed here, Sir." 

The man seemed civil, though peremptory. 

" For Heaven s sake," said I, appealingly, " can 
you tell me how, or where, I can see the man who dis 
tributes the Cornhill letters ? " 

" I really can t, Sir." 

" Could you tell me possibly where the man lives?" 

" Really couldn t, Sir ; don t know at all ; de say it 
wouldn t be far." 

I think he saw my look of despair, for he continued 
in a kinder tone : " Dear me, eh did you, p raps, eh 
might I ask, eh what your business might be with 
the, eh Cornhill postman ? " 

I caught at what seemed my last hope. " I want- 
ed," said I, " to make an inquiry " 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

He interrupted "Oh, dear me bless me an in 
quiry ! Why, you see, there s an office for inquiry. It s 
here about round the corner ; you ll see the window 
as you turn ; closes at three (looking at his watch) ; 
you ve, eh six minutes, just." 

I went around the corner ; I found the window 
Office for Inquiry, posted above. There was a man 
who stuttered, asking about a letter which he had mail 
ed for Calcutta two months before, to the address of 
" Mr. T-t-t-th-thet-Theodore T-t-tr-tret-Trenham." 

I never heard a stutterer with less charity before. 
A clock was to be seen over the head of the office clerk 
within. I watched it with nervous anxiety. The Cal 
cutta applicant at length made an end of his story. The 
clerk turned to the clock. Two minutes were allowed 
me. 

I had arranged a short story. The clerk took my 
name, residence, address promised that the matter 
should be looked after. 

I walked back to Covent Garden, weary, but satis 
fied. 

The next morning the waiter handed me a letter ad 
dressed properly enough, " , No. 9 Covent 

Garden." 

The banker s letter had been delayed. My search 
through the London office had been entirely unneces 
sary. 



20 SEVEN STORIES. 

Three days after, and when I was engrossed with 
Madame Toussaud s wax-work and the Vauxhall won 
ders, and had forgotten my trials of Cornhill, I received 
a huge envelope, under the seal of the General Post- 
office of London, informing me that no letter bearing 
my address had been distributed to the Cornhill carrier 
during the last seven days ; and advising me that, 
should such an one be received at the London Post- 
office, it would, in obedience to my wishes, be prompt 
ly delivered at No. 9 Covent Garden Square. 

For aught I know, the officials of the London office 
may be looking for that letter still. 

I hope not. 

Shall I detach another memory from this mosaic of 
note books ? 

It is the figure of a ship that I see, making her way 
slowly, and lumberingly out of the Havre docks. The 
little jetty where the old round tower stood (they tell 
me it is gone now) is crowded with people ; for it is a 
day of fete , and the idlers have nothing better to occupy 
them for the hour, than to watch the trim American 
vessel as she hauls out into the stream. As we slip 
through the dock gates there is a chorus of voices from 
the quay " Adieu ! " " Bon voyage ! " and the emi 
grants who crowd the deck shout and wave a reply. A 
bearded man meantime, is counting and scoring them 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

off", and ordering them below. There are crates of cab 
bages, huge baskets of meats, red-shirted sailors ; and I 
hear from some quarter the cackle of poultry, and see a 
cow s head peering inquiringly from under the long boat 
which lies over the cook s galley amidships. 

A sooty, wheezing little steamer presently takes a 
tow-line ; the French pilot with stiff, but confident Eng 
lish, is at the helm ; our hawser that is fast to the little 
tug stiffens, and we swoop away from dock and jetty ; 
we brush a low two-master that is in our track crash 
goes her boom, and our main-yard fouling in her top 
rigging, makes her mast bend like a withe ; we upon 
the quarter deck shy away to avoid the falling spars ; 
there is a creak and a slip French oaths and English 
oaths mingle in the air ; a broken brace spins through 
the whizzing blocks, until running out it falls with a 
splash into the water, and the little vessel is free. 

I see them gathering up the fragments of their shat 
tered boom, and catch the echo of an angry "Sacre!" 
floating down the wind. The jetty grows smaller ; its 
crowds dwindle to a black and gray patch of people, 
from among whom one or two white kerchiefs are still 
fluttering long and last adieux. Presently the mainsail 
is dropped ; the little French pilot screams out " Hyst 
de geeb ! " the tow-rope is slipped, and we are battling 
with canvas only, for an omng, in the face of a sharp 
Northwester. 



22 SEVEN STORIES. 

My companions of the quarter-deck and after cabin, 
are a young French lad who is going out to join an 
elder brother established in New York the burly cap 
tain, who makes it a point of etiquette to appear the 
first day in a new beaver which sits above his round red 
face with the most awkward air in the world and last 
a Swiss lady, with three little flaxen-haired children, 
who is on her way to a new home already provided for 
her in the far West, by a husband who has emigrated 
some previous year. It is a small company for the 
ample cabin of the good ship Nimrod ; but she is re 
puted a dull sailer ; and we embark at a season when 
strong westerly winds are prevailing. 

The captain is a testy man, loving his power not 
so much by reason of any naturally tyrannic disposition, 
as by a long education from the day when he first bore 
the buffetings of a cabin boy, toward the belief that 
authority was most respected when most despotically 
urged ; and very much subsequent observation has con 
firmed me in the opinion, that many American ship 
masters have brutalized all their more humane instincts, 
by the same harsh education of the sea. 

The French lad was at that wondering, and passive 
age, which accepted all the accidents of his new experi 
ence of life, as normal conditions of the problem he was 
bound to solve ; and I think that if the steward had 
some day killed the captain and taken command, he 



INTR OD UCTION. 23 

would have reckoned it only the ordinary procedure on 
American packets, and have eaten his dinner of which 
he always showed high appreciation with his usual 
appetite. 

The Swiss lady was of a different stamp ; refined 
and gentle to a charm ; a Swiss protestant, devoted to 
her faith, and giving type of a class, that is I think 
hardly to be found out of Scotland, New England, and 
certain portions of Switzerland ; a class of women, 
with whom a sense of Christian duty so profound as 
to seem almost a mental instinct holds every action 
and hap in life under subordination. I paint no ascetic 
here, who is lashed to dogmas, and carries always a 
harsh Levitical judgment under lifted eyebrows ; but 
one slow to condemn, yearning to approve ; true as 
steel to one faith, but tolerant of others ; wide in sym 
pathy, and with a charity that glows and spends, be 
cause it cannot contain itself. I wish there were more 
such. 

The children are fairy little sprites, educated, as 
such a mother must needs educate them to moderate 
their extravagances of play, at a word, and to cherish 
an habitual respect for those older than themselves. 

The first mate is a simpleton, shipped upon the last 
day at Havre (the old mate having slipped his berth), 
in whom, it is soon evident, the captain has no confi 
dence, and who becomes a mere supernumerary among 



24 SEVEN STORIES. 

the crew. The place of second mate, is filled by a sail 
or, who has acted as third mate ; the old second, being 
killed not long before by a blow from the windlass. 
Among the crew I note only a shy Norwegian who is 
carpenter, and a lithe, powerful mulatto, with a con 
stant protest in his look against the amalgamation of 
his blood, who acts as ship s cook. 

There is a tall unshaven emigrant, who brings on 
deck every day a sick infant wrapped in a filthy blan 
ket, out of which the little eyes stare vividly, as if they 
already looked upon the scenes of another world. There 
is a tall singer, in a red cap who smokes, as it seems to 
me, all the day long ; and every pleasant evening, when 
the first bitter rocking of the voyage is over, he leads 
off a half score of voices in some German chant, which 
carries over the swaying water a sweet echo of the 
Rhine-land. 

There is a German girl of some eighteen summers, 
blue-eyed, and yellow-haired, who as she sits upon one 
of the water-casks, with her knitting in hand, coquettes 
with the tall singer ; she knits he smokes ; her eyes 
are on her work his eyes are upon her ; she changes 
her needles, and looks anywhere but at him ; he fills 
his pipe, and looks (for that brief interval) anywhere 
but at her. 

All these figures and faces come back to me, clear 
as life as I follow the limnings of my musty note-books. 



INTR OD UCTION. 25 

Again, on some day of storm, I see the decks 
drenched and empty. The main and fore top-sails are 
close reefed, and all others furled. The atmosphere is 
a wide whirl of spray, through which I see the glitter 
ing broad sides of great blue waves bearing down upon 
us, and buoying the flimsy ship up in mid air, as if our 
gaunt hulk, with all her live freight, and all her creak 
ing timbers, were but a waif of thistle-down. Sailors in 
dreadnoughts grope their way here and there, clinging 
by the coils that hang upon the belaying pins, and 
c taughtening, in compliance with what seems the need 
less orders of the testy captain, some slackened sheet 
or tack. I see the deck slipping from under me as I 
walk, or bringing me to sudden, dreary pause, as the bow 
lifts to some great swell of water. And below, when 
I grope thither, and shut the state-room door to wind 
ward with a terrible lift, I sink back with one hand 
fast in the berth-curtains, and the other in the bottom of 
the washbowl. I reflect a moment, and try to catch the 
gauge of the ship s movements ; but while I reflect, a 
great plunge flings me down against the laboring door ; 
I grasp the knob ; I grasp the bed curtains which stretch 
conveniently toward me. The door flies open, the cur 
tains fly back, and I am thrown headlong into my berth. 

There, I can at least brace myself; now I am 
wedged one way ; now I am wedged the other. The 
stifling odor of the damp clothes, the swaying curtains, 



26 SEVEN STORIES. 

the poor lamp toiling in its socket to find some level, 
are very wearisome and sickening. I hear noises from 
neighbor berths that are no way comforting ; I hear 
feeble calls for the steward ; bah ! shall I read these 
notes only to revive the odium of sea-sickness ? 

Again, I see the sun on a great reach of level 
water, that has only a wavy tremor in it as peaceful 
as the bowing and the lifting of grain in the wind. 
The yellow-haired German is at her knitting ; her red- 
capped admirer is filling his pipe. Our quarter-deck s 
company are all above board, and luxuriating in the 
charming weather when a lank, hatless, bearded man 
strides with a quaint woollen bundle in his arms to the 
lee gangway, and plash goes his burden upon the 
water. It is a sudden and sorry burial ; for it is the 
dead infant, whose eyes looked beyond us, three days 
ago. I see the Swiss lady, with her hands met to 
gether ; and her little ones, when they learn what has 
befallen, grow pale, and leave their play, and whisper 
together, and look over astern where the white bundle 
goes whisking under the inky blue. 

Even the French lad bestirs himself into asking 
what it may be ? 

" A child dead that s the body." 

" Sacr-re /" and he, taking his cigar from his mouth, 
looks after it too, shadowy now, and fading in the 
depths. There are times when the weakest of us, as 



INTR OD UCTION. 2 7 

well as the strongest, eagerly strain our eyes and our 
thought toward that great mystery of Death. 

It is but a shabby funeral, as I said ; no prayer 
save the silent one of the Swiss lady. God only knows 
what worshipful or tender thought of the child s future, 
was in the mind of the emigrant father, as he tossed 
the little package from him into the sea. He staggered 
as he walked back to the hatchway, to climb below ; 
but it may have been only from the motion of the ship. 

After this it was perhaps a matter of two days 
I remember a somewhat worthier burial. It is an old 
man of seventy (they said) takes the plunge. He has 
been ailing from the day of sailing ; going with his 
daughter and grandchild to try the new land. She is 
chief -mourner. There is a plank the carpenter has 
brought ; and he has placed one end upon the bulwarks 
and the other upon a cask ; they lay presently a long 
canvas bundle upon it ; the old dead man is safely 
sewed in, with a cannon shot at his feet. Some one 
among the emigrants reads a guttural prayer. The 
captain pops out an "Amen !" that sounds like a mili 
tary command ; and thereupon the carpenter, with the 
second-mate, tilt the plank ; and away the old man slides 
with a sullen, heavy splash. The daughter rushes to 
the gangway, with a scream as if they had done him 
wrong, and looks yearningly after him. If she saw 
anything, it was only the gray sack going down full 



28 SEVEN STORIES, 

three fathoms under, before our stern had licked the 
little whirlpool smooth, where he sank. 

I observe after some days, that the captain is grow 
ing more crotchety and testy ; it irks him to share the 
night watches as he does, with only the plucky little 
second-mate, who, though sailorly enough in his air, 
has I notice a very awkward handling to his sextant ; 
but he makes up for his lack of the science of naviga 
tion with a pestilent shower of suggestions to the helms 
man : "A pint nigher the wind!" "Kip her full!" 
"Now you re off, you lubber!" Thus I hear him, 
hour after hour, as he paces off his night watches upon 
the deck above my head. 

I look back upon a sunny noon shining down upon 
the vessel, and upon the little Swiss children, who have 
forgotten the dead baby, and are rollicking up and down 
the decks with glee. The mother seated by the taff- 
rail, with a book under her eye is not reading, but 
looking over the page at that romp of her little ones 
to which I have contributed my own quota, by joining 
in their play of " Puss in the corner." 

Suddenly there is a swift, angry outcry from the 
waist of the ship the sound of a quick blow a scuf 
fle, and loud shouts. The little children cower away 
like frighted deer, and the mother swoops forward, 
her face full of terror, to give them the protection of 
those outstretched arms. I step to the little bridge 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

that reaches from the quarter deck to the long boat. 
There is an excited, clamoro as group of sailors and of 
emigrants below me ; in the middle of them is the cap 
tain, hatless and panting, and with his hand streaming 
with blood ; the tall mulatto cook confronts him, his 
face livid with rage. I learn about the happening of it 
all, afterward. It seems that the captain had given an 
order, which the cook has chosen either to neglect, or to 

treat with indifference. " But by , sir, on my ship, 

sir, I ll have my orders obeyed : " and thereupon, he 
has seized a billet of wood (an ugly stick, I remember,) 
and rushed upon the mulatto. The blow it seems only 
stunned the man for a moment, for he has rallied so 
far as to give an answering blow ; and as the captaiu 
springs forward to seize him by the throat, he has 
caught his hand in his teeth (they are as white and 
sharp as a leopard s) and nearly torn away his thumb. 
There is a manifest show of sympathy with the muti 
neer, on the part of the sailors ; but the instinct of obe 
dience is strong strong even in the culprit ; for he 
makes no resistance now, as the carpenter and second 
officer place the irons on his wrists. And presently he 
is safe in the meat house, under the jolly boat ; at least 
we think so and the captain, as well who coolly 
pockets the key. 

It is a sad break-in upon our quiet life of the decks ; 
we are as yet only mid- way over the ocean, and a war 



30 SEVEN STORIES. 

is brooding on shipboard ; the sailors go sulkily to their 
tasks ; they even bandy words with the doughty second 
officer. Who knows what course the helmsman may 
give the ship to-night ? 

The poor Swiss lady is in an agony of apprehension, 
with those frighted little ones demanding explanations 
she cannot give. " And what if he had killed monsieur 
le capitaine f ah par exemple ! Et comme il 6taitferoce I 
je I ai vu moi." 

I am with the watch till midnight ; all is quiet ; I 
leave the captain on deck with his arm in its sling not 
the less testy, for that mangled hand of his. At four, 
he goes below again (so they tell me) , but I am sleep 
ing at last ; yet only for a little while, and in a dis 
turbed way. 

At six, I hear a sudden rush of feet over my head, 
and directly after a leap down the companion way ; 
a man bursts into the captain s room next me ; I am 
wide awake now. 

" For God s sake ! quick, captain ; the door is 
broken down, and the man s out irons off; they say 
he s armed." 

I dress hurriedly ; but the captain is before me, 
and I hear the click of his pistol-lock before he goes 
out. 

I am all ears now for the least sound. 

" There s the scoundrel ! quick ! " 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

Whose voice is that ? A tempest of oaths succeeds, 
and now crack ! crack ! two pistol shots, and a 
heavy fall upon the deck. I rush up the companion 
way, and run to the quarter rail ; a half-dressed swarm 
of emigrants are beating off the sailors, and stamp fu 
riously upon the mulatto who is struggling, and writh 
ing upon the deck. 

The carpenter and second officer are assisting the 
captain to rise, and he staggers aft not shot, but hor 
ribly bruised and scalded about the head. He has 
fired two shots both, strangely enough, missed his 
man ; and if the emigrants had not been near, the en 
raged cook, armed as he was with a heavy iron skillet, 
would have made an end of him. 

The mutineer is in irons again, and is presently led 
aft to the taffrail, that he may have no communica 
tion with the sailors. But it is a small ship, after all, 
in which to pack away so resolute and determined a 
mutineer, against all chance of connivance. The man 
is suffering fearfully from that stamping of the deck ; 
no creature could be more inoffensive than the poor 
fellow now. I venture a private talk with him, and a 
show of some friendliness touches him to the quick. 
Aye, there are those who will shiver and groan (he told 
me this) when they hear that he has worn manacles 
and must go to prison (he knows that) ; his father is 
alive and an honest working-man, God help him ! but 



32 SEVEN STORIES. 

his father s son never was struck a blow before. " I 
wish to I d killed him ! " 

We made a common duty on the quarter deck of 
dressing the captain s head, and of keeping by him dur 
ing his watches. A very dreary time it was. 

The carpenter reports certain oak plank, with which 
presently he sets to work upon a cell for the culprit, be 
tween decks, among the emigrants ; and there he was 
lodged next day. But the sailors found their way to 
him, we learned ; duty was more slackly performed than 
ever, and a thousand miles or more still between us and 
our "Western harbor. I felt sure that if he escaped 
again, the prisoner would throttle the captain, as a 
wild beast might, and kill him out of hand. The sec 
ond officer beside being a doubtful navigator, had no 
mettle in him to keep in awe that sullen company of 
sailors ; I think they would have tossed him overboard ; 
and we, of the quarter deck, I think were not looked 
upon with great favor. Even the little children took 
on a gloomy, apprehensive air, which they may well 
have caught from the distraught and anxious manner 
of the mother. 

"Week follows week, and still the winds baffle us : 
we count thirty-five days, and six hundred miles are to 
be run : we listen nervously for all unusual night- 
sounds coming from below. The solitary pair of pis 
tols belonging to the whole quarter-deck company are 



1NTR OD UCTION, 33 

charged with four heavy slugs each. The captain 
meantime is threatened with erysipelas, and is com 
pelled to keep mostly on deck ; he fairly dozes upon his 
long watches, while the French lad or myself keep 
guard. 

" God send good wind ! " how we pray that prayer ; 
but none so fervently, I am sure, as our Swiss friend, 
with her little jewels clustering about her. 

I see the same good ship Nimrod, stanch and safe, 
sailing up through the Narrows, with a laughing sun 
playing on the shores, and three laughing and rejoicing 
children looking eagerly out, at the strange sights at 
the forts that flank us at the broad bay that blazes in 
the front at the islands that sleep upon its bosom at 
our city spires that glitter along the horizon. 

I see the manacled man brought up from below the 
hatches sallow and with cavernous cheeks, and some 
thing dangerous in his eye still ; he is led away between 
two officers to jail to prison ; three years of it, the 
papers said. The French lad has eaten his last lunch, 
and comes upon the deck a perfect D Orsay in his equip 
ment. Now, he must have grown out of my knowl 
edge ; ten twelve fifteen years will have given him 
if dyspepsia did not make him a victim the figure 
of an alderman. I trust he takes life serenely. 

Is the captain among the living ? Does anybody 
answer ? And does he keep the same rotund face and 

9* 



34 SEVEN STORIES. 

form, and affect the same preposterous beaver on days 
of embarkation which he wore in the old times 

" as he sailed as he sailed " ? 

And the Swiss lady ? She found her home I 
know that with all her flock ; from her own hand, I 
have it : 

" Nous y entrons avec courage et confiance, nous 
attentons a Celui qui a promis d etre avec nous jusqu a la 
fin. Son Amour est le seul qui puisse suffire a tous nos 
besoms." The same brave Christian spirit ! the same 
hearty benevolence too : " Puissiez-vous, mon cher 
Monsieur, 1 eprouver [son Amour] au plus profond de 
votre etre, afin que vous soyez heureux, selon le voeu de 

"Votre Amie." 

Long years, and I heard nothing more : at length, 
upon a certain summer s day, I met one who knew and 
appreciated her sterling worth her tender, womanly 
nature. 

" And how is it with Madame in the new home ?" 

u Monsieur ! elle est au del ! " 

I believed him with all my heart. 

So we pass : voyagers all, to the Silent Sea. Of 
some we hear as they glide through the straits ; of many 
we hear nothing and shall know nothing, until we our 
selves are arrived. 



INTRODUCTION. 35 

Thus far, and with a pleasant recollection of old 
scenes, I have but filled in the little skeleton notes that 
meet my eye in the musty memoranda of travel. 
Through all the night, I might plague my brain, and 
vex my heart, with this revival of scenes and characters, 
half forgotten, but which, when they come with that 
fresh and airy presence, that the small hours ayont 
the twal alone can give them, cheat me into a glow 
or a tenderness of feeling, of which next morning I am 
ashamed. 

Yet why ? 

Our life is not all lived by day-light. It is not all 
summed up in what we do, or in what we shall do ; 
what we think and what we remember, have their place 
in the addition. Therefore when night comes again, 
and when reading and severer work is done, I rather 
incline to build away, upon the scaffoldings which old 
notes and old letters may afford story by story : and 
it is precisely this, which I have been doing here ; until 
at last I have a book, Seven Stories high to which this 
introduction shall serve for Basement. 



FIRST STORY: 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN, 



FIBST STORY: 



Wet Day at an Irish Inn. 

ON the 24th of December, 18 , I woke up at 
half past five in the old town of Armagh, near 
the north-east coast of Ireland. The day was lowery, 
the inn at which I was quartered, dirty and unattrac 
tive ; my lonely breakfast in the coffee-room upon half- 
cooked chops and cold muffins dismal in the extreme ; 
so that I determined to brave all chances of the weather, 
and book myself for an outside place (all the insides be 
ing taken from Dungannon) on the coach for Drogheda. 
This left me, however, a spare half hour in which to 
ramble over the dreary old cathedral of Armagh, which 
my usher assured me " all the gintlemen allowed to be 
the oldest in the kingdom ; " and another half hour, for 
an examination of the unfinished arches of the new 



40 SEVEN STORIES. 

cathedral, which the same veracious usher affirmed, 
would be " the foinest building in all Europe." 

I hope it is finished before this, and that under its 
roof, my Irish cicerone may have repented of his sins 
of exaggeration. 

The Drogheda mail-coach in those days passed 
through the towns of Newry and Dundalk ; and long 
before we had reached the first of these, which we did 
at about eleven of the forenoon, the cold mists had given 
way to a pelting rain, and I had determined to give up 
my fare, and risk such hospitality as an Irish inn would 
afford. Black s coach tavern in Newry did not promise 
large cheer ; the front was dingy ; the street narrow ; 
the entrance hall low and begrimed with dirt and smoke. 
Patrick took my portmanteau to number six, and I beg 
ged for a private parlor with fire, where I might dry my 
wet clothes at my leisure. A gaunt woman in black, 
not uncommunicative, and who appeared to unite in 
herself the three-fold offices of landlady, maid, and 
waiter, showed me presently to the " Wellington " on 
the second floor ; and Patrick was directed to kindle a 
fire in the rusty grate. 

The apartment was not such an one as I would have 
chosen for a merry Christinas eve. For furniture, there 
was a faded and draggled carpet, a few cumbrous old 
chairs set off with tattered brocade, an ancient piano in 
the corner, a round dining table) whose damask cover 



WET DAT AT AN IRISH INN. 41 

showed a multitude of ink-stains,) as well as a " Dublin 
Mail" of the last week, and a County Gazetteer. The 
solitary window was hung with sombre curtains of 
woollen stuff, and by great good fortune looked directly 
upon the main street of Newry. At least then, I might 
count upon the solace of studying the passers by, and 
possibly my opposite neighbors. 

The first object, however, was to dry my wet 
clothes ; nor was this easy ; the coals were damp and 
did not burn freely ; the chimney was foul, and there 
was a strong bituminous aroma presently floating 
through the room. But I met the situation courage 
ously, thrust an old chair fairly between the jams, sat 
myself bestride it, unfolded the yellow " Dublin Mail" 
over the back, and entered valorously upon a conquest 
of the twenty-four hours, which lay between me and the 
next up-coach for Drogheda. The " Dublin Mail" was 
dull ; there was a long discussion of the Maynooth Col 
lege and its regimen ; but who cared for Maynooth ? 
There was " important news from Calcutta," but I had 
read it in Liverpool a week before : there was a column 
upon American affairs, in the course of which a careful 
consideration of the military career of General Fill- 
more this was interesting, but short. There was a 
murder or two mentioned in retired country districts, of 
landlords, or bailiffs, neither of which possessed much 
novelty ; there was a warm editorial, ending with a 



42 SEVEN STORIES. 

resonant period about " College Green," and a little 
poem in a corner, written to the air of " Eirie go 
bragh." I lay down the "Mail" and took up the 
Gazetteer. I read, and felt my coat ; and read again 
sometimes thumbing the sweaty leaves backward, some 
times forward in such unceasing way, however, that 
before my clothes were fairly dry, I could have passed 
an examination upon the condition and prospects of 
Newry, and Armagh, and Portadown. 

After this recreation by the grate, I betook myself 
to the window. The rain was still falling in torrents. 
Over opposite was a watch-maker s shop, with a curi 
ously-faced clock over the door-way, which I am sure 
must have hung there a score of years, and I venture to 
say, it is hanging there yet. Within the window of this 
shop, which was full of gewgaws, I caught glimpses of 
an old " Heriot," with a magnifier thrust into the socket 
of his eye, and squinting curiously over a medley of 
brazen cog-wheels ; he looked, for all the world, as a 
watch-maker might do, in a country-town of New Eng 
land ; and I dare say, if I had stepped over to him with 
my watch to mend, he would have popped it open in the 
same unvarying way glanced at the trade-mark 
squinted at the cogs, and thrust in some long steel feeler, 
and closed it with a pop, and removed his one-horned 
eye, and hung the watch at the end of a row of invalid 
watches, and promised it on Saturday, and had it ready 
on the Thursday following. 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 43 

A little farther down the street, was the establish 
ment of an Irish milliner ; its lower windows so bediz 
ened with bonnets and haberdashery, that I could see 
nothing beside except once a pair of black eyes peep 
ing out after a carriage that whirled by in the rain. 
On the other side of the goldsmith s, was the shop of a 
baker and pastry cook, which was decked prettily with 
evergreens, and within which I saw a stout woman 
with arms akimbo, staring out as gloomily as myself at 
the rain. 

Over the goldsmith s shop was a window, at which 
I saw from time to time a pair of little rosy-faced girls, 
who may have been seven or eight ; and between them, 
and seemingly on most familiar terms, a tall Newfound 
land dog, who appeared as much interested as them 
selves, in occasional, furtive glances upon the reeking 
street. Once or twice too, a simply dressed young 
woman of uncertain age, who may have been the moth 
er of the children, showed herself at the same window. 

After making these observations, and pacing up the 
parlor once or twice, I betook myself again to the 
Gazetteer. Twelve, one, two, sounded from the clock 
over the mantel : two hours yet to my dinner. 

Again I turned to the street for relief: a little girl, 
in close hood, was stepping out of the door-way beside 
the jeweller s shop, and, with her, the dog I had seen 
above stairs, with a basket in his mouth ; away they 



44 SEVEN STORIES. 

went, trotting familiarly out of sight down the street ; 
this at least was an incident for me ; and I sat myself 
composedly down to watch for their return. The little 
girl s mate in the window opposite, seemed bent upon 
the same object. After twenty minutes perhaps, dog 
and child came trotting back, thoroughly drenched ; the 
dog still carrying the basket, now apparently weighty 
with some burthen. And the servant happening in at 
the moment to look after my fire, I called her attention 
to the drenched couple, as they entered the door-way 
opposite. 

" Oh, aye, surr, it s a good baste, is that ; he keeps 
by the poor little craythurs night and day ; it s very 
poor they must be, and their mither s a lone woman ; 
she s been opposite a matter of three months now in a 
little room she s rinted o the gold-bater ; it s not much 
in the way of niddle-work she ll be foinding ; the Lord 
knows how the poor craythur lives." 

By this time the pair had returned to their cham 
ber, as I judged by the movements of the little girl who 
had been stationed at the window. Very likely she was 
dancing over the contents of the basket. 

" Perhaps the dog has brought them their Christmas 
dinner," said I. 

" And shure, surr, I hope he may : but it s a sorry 
dinner they have most days." 

A sudden thought struck me. I was out of all reach 



WET DAT AT AN IRISH INX. 45 

of the little Christmas charities of home ; what if I were 
to turn a few pennies to the cheer of my little neighbors 
over the way ? A charitable thought is best closed 
with at once : it is too apt to balk us, if we wait : so I 
pulled out a five shilling piece, and said, " My good 
woman, you see the cake-shop yonder ? " 

" And shure I do, surr." 

" Would you be good enough to step over and buy 
a couple of little Christmas cakes, with a sprig of holly 
in each of them, and take them over to the two poor 
girls opposite, and tell them that a stranger who is rain- 
bound in the opposite inn, wishes them a merry Christ 
mas for to-morrow ? " 

" Shure I will, surr ; and the Lord bless you for t." 

There was something in the manner of the gaunt 
waiting woman, that forbade my doubting her : still I 
watched saw her brave the rain saw her appear with 
the package, saw her enter the low passage opposite, 
and presently the two little girls came romp* _g to the 
window, and kissed their hands to me ; while ine mother 
appears for a moment with a modest bow of acknowl 
edgment. 

I think the fire burned more cheerfully after this ; 
the room seemed to wear a new aspect ; my clothes 
were thoroughly dry ; my appetite was ripening for din 
ner ; and I read the little poem in the corner of the 
" Dublin Mail" to the air of ;t Eirie go bragh" with a 
good deal of kindliness. 



46 SEVEN STORIES. 

The waiting woman, with grateful messages, had 
oome and gone, and I was deep in Maynooth again, 
when my attention was called by the rattle of a carriage 
in the street. It had apparently come to a stop near by. 
I strolled to the window to see how it might be. Sure 
enough, over opposite was an Irish jaunting car all 
mud-bespattered, two portmanteaus upon it, and a stout, 
ruddy-faced man in mackintosh, and in close-fitting 
skull cap, just alighting. He stepped into the gold 
smith s shop, apparently to make some inquiries seem 
ed satisfied on the instant returned to the car, ordered 
off the portmanteaus, and pulled out his purse a well- 
filled one I judged to pay the driver. The little girls 
I noticed were pressing their faces against the glass 
and gazing down once or twice looking back as if to 
summon their mother to the scene. She also appeared 
presently (it was just as the drenched traveller had paid 
his fare, and had raised his face), and looking earnestly 
for a moment drooped away, and fell, beside the win 
dow. TLjre could be no doubt that the woman had 
fainted ; there was terror in the faces of the children. 

I rang the bell hastily, and stepping to the door as 
the waitress came, I said, " My good woman, there s 
trouble over the way ; the mother of those children has 
just swooned by the window, and there s no one to care 
for her." 

She came forward to look out, with true womanly 



WET DAY AT AX IRISH INN. 47 

curiosity, though there was no hope of seeing what the 
actual trouble might be. There was a vain glance at 
the opposite chamber, then her eye fastened on the 
newly-arrived traveller, who was busy yet with his 
portmanteaus. 

" Good God," said she, in consternation, " it s 
Moike Carlingford ! Yes, by the powers, it s Moike," 
and she clasped her hands together, in what I thought a 
most melodramatic way for a woman of her age, and 
presence. 

" It s naught but Moike," said she again, as if ap 
pealing to me. " He was niver a bit lost then, and it s 
he, as shure as iver I live." 

"And pray who may Mike Carliugford be ?" said 
I, thinking the matter was getting a touch of humor ; 
but her answer brought me to a dead pause. 

" Moike ? why Moike is a murderer ! It s not for 
me to say it, but it s the law ; and I knew him as well 
as iver I knew my brither before he wint away, and 
fell to bad ways ; and he wint down by Belfast, and 
there was an old gintleman that lived there it s near 
eight years agone and Moike would marry his daugh 
ter or his niece, and the gintleman wouldn t hearken, 
and Moike bate the old gintleman a bit roughly, and 
Moike dropped his badge in the bush, where they 
found the old gint s body, and he got away, and they 
followed him to Cork, and he took ship, and the ship 



48 SEVEN STORIES. 

was lost and all aboard, and by my sowl it s Moike 
again yonder, and he ll be caught, and be hung ; and 
I m sorry for Moike ! " 

There was a good swift Irish current in her story, 
and at the end of it, she rushed away to spread the 
news below stairs. Meantime the newly arrived per 
sonage opposite had passed in with his luggage : there 
was nothing more to be observed at the window over 
the goldsmith s shop : children, dog, and mother had 
alike disappeared. I fancied I heard from time to time, 
an exciting discussion going on below stairs in the inn ; 
but who were the parties to it, or what was the burden, 
I could not determine. 

The " Dublin Mail" and the Gazetteer had now 
lost their interest : Mike the murderer had even driven 
the fainting woman opposite, wholly out of my mind. 
I could not for a moment doubt that there was some 
connection between the two parties of which the talka 
tive landlady was ignorant. Bat was the mother s 
emotion the result of fear ? Had this stout Mike re 
appeared to commit new crimes ? I cannot say that I 
had the least apprehension : the jolly face of the new 
comer, with the iron-gray whiskers, and the sun-burnt 
cheeks, could no more be associated with the idea of 
murder, than the Christmas season. The good woman 
of the inn must be laboring under some strange mis 
take. Yet what right after all, had I a passing trav 
eller to doubt her earnest assertion ? 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 49 

My wet day at the Irish inn was gaining an interest 
that I could not have believed possible. Time and 
again I looked over the way, but no Hying creature ap 
peared at the window. Presently I observed the stumpy 
figure of my landlord moving across the street, where 
he entered the shop of the watch-maker, and opened an 
earnest conference ; at least I judged as much by his 
extraordinary gesticulations, and by the nervous rapid 
ity with which the old Heriot pushed aside his cog 
wheels, and came fairly around his little counter to talk 
more freely with the visitor. I inferred from what I 
had seen thus far, that Mike Carlingford was a character 
at one time well known hereabout, that an evident mys 
tery of some kind attached to his history, and that the 
host had taken over the suspicions of the mistress to 
compare with the observations of the old shop-keeper ; 
I inferred farther from the resolute shakings of the 
head of this latter (which I plainly saw through his 
glass door) that the watch-mender had either not ob 
served closely the features of the new-comer (a thing 
scarcely possible), or that he doubted wholly the sus 
picions of the acting landlady. 

My host came back in an apparently disturbed and 
thoughtful mood. It still lacked an hour to my dinner, 
and the rain was unabated ; a walk about the old town, 
which I should have been charmed to take, was not to 
be thought of. What if I were to make some excuse 
3 



50 SEVEN STORIES. 

to step below to the tap-room, and engage the host him 
self in a little talk, that might throw some light on my 
opposite neighbors ? No sooner thought, than done. 
The stumpy little man was abundantly communicative. 
He had been engaged in the tap, and had not seen the 
" car" drive up. " Meesus Flaherty, she that okerpies 
persition as landleddy since that Mistress O Donohue 
that s me wife, Surr. that was is dade, has a good 
mimory, and thinks that it s Moike that has come back 
to life. Loike enuff; if it s indade Moike, he ll be hung. 
Maybe it s Moike, and again maybe it s not Moike ; 
it s not for the like o me to jist say. Mister Rafferty, 
it s he that minnds the watches in a very pertikeler man 
ner, and has been my neighbor for a score o years, 
says, by all the powers, that it s not Moike Carling- 
ford at all, and he s not for disturbin the darlints above 
stairs, if so be they re to have a merry Christmas 
among em." 

I venture to ask after the murder, with which Car- 
lingford s name had been associated. 

" It s seven or eight years gone now," said the 
host " indade it s a good bit better than that, it must 
be ten or or twelve since Moike that lived hereabouts 
goes down nigh to Belfast, and they say fell into bad 
company there ; and he was one of the younkers that 
took to wearin o badges, and the elictions were coming 
off, and plenty o shindies they had. And an old gintle- 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 51 

man Donnont was his name who lived jist out o* 
Belfast, was a tirrible politician, and was a magistrate 
too ; it s he was murdered. He had clapped some of 
the badge-boys into prison, and they threatened him ; 
and sure enough by and by they found the poor gintle- 
man with his skull cracked, lying in a bit of brush, at 
his gate. They found him in the morning, with a 
young pup, that he had, nosing about him, and playing 
with a bit o ribbon, which, when they came to exam 
ine, was Moike Carlingford s badge, with his name in 
full to t." 

" And was this all the evidence ?" I asked. 

" This started the scent, as it were : but it came out 
at the inquest that Moike had been seen hanging about 
the place night after night, and what s more he was in 
love with the gintlernan s daughter or niece, and Dor- 
mont had forbid him the house, and threatened Moike ; 
which Moike wasn t the man to bear, without his speech 
back ; and there were them that heard it. But what 
was worst of all, he wasn t to be found for the trile : 
they traced In m to Cork, where he went aboard the 
Londonderry that sailed for a place in Rushy, which 
was lost at sea and niver a man found ; which, if ye 
plase, looks a good deal as if it s niver Moike ; though 
to be shure, the Flaherty has an iligant mimory." 

"And what became of the poor girl ?" said I. 

" And shure, that s the worst of it : she wint from 



52 SEVEN STORIES. 

thereabouts, and they say (dropping his voice) there 
was a little baby one day, which she said that she was 
married, but would niver tell who was her husband, 
which looked uncommon suspicious ; and her father 
wouldn t take her in, and there was a story I heard 
from a North of England man, where her father lived, 
that she went to the workus and died there." 

This finished the report of the landlord, and I saun 
tered up again to the Wellington parlor, where the Fla 
herty, in a clean cap and ribbons, was just then laying 
the cloth. 

The bustle of some new arrival called her away for 
a few moments ; she re-appeared, however, shortly af 
ter begging my " pardin but there s an Inglish gin- 
tleman just come in, and the coffee-room is not over tidy 
for visitors, tho she had spoken to Mister O Donohue 
times enough and would I be so good as to allow the 
Inglish gintleman to share the Wellington parlor with 
me ?" 

" Of course," I said, " I shall be delighted ; and if 
the gentleman don t think the hour too early, perhaps 
we can take a cut off the same joint." 

The Flaherty was most gracious in her thanks. 
Presently the new visitor came up the stairs, attended 
by the landlord. 

"It s near to Armagh, you tell me ?" I overheard 
him say. 



WET DAT AT AN IRISH INN. 53 

"A matter of three miles the hither side," returned 
the landlord. 

" You re sure of the name, Bonne ford ?" 

" As shure as I am of me own." 

" Very good," returned the Englishman, " have me 
a c fly at the door at seven ; we ll put two horses to the 
road ; two hours there and two back : will you have a 
bed for me at midnight if I come ?" 

" Wheniver you loike," said the host ; and the Eng 
lishman came bustling in a tall sandy-haired man of 
sixty perhaps, full of restiveness, and of the condition, 
I should judge, of a moderately well-to-do English 
farmer. He wore a snuff colored coat, and over it a 
Mackintosh, yellow leathern gaiters, splashed with 
mud, and a broad-brimmed drab hat. 

He thanked me for my civility in a short, sharp 
way, and after a very brief toilet, disposed himself for 
the dinner which was now smoking on the table. 

" And Mary," said he turning to the gaunt land 
lady, " please bring me a pint o sherry, and let Boots 
clean up my galoshes, and let him have the 4 fly at the 
door at seven to a minute ; and Mary 

" Mistress Flaherty, surr ! " with a curtsy, said 
the woman. 

" Oh, eh, I beg pardon Mistress Flaherty ; and will 
Mistress Flaherty see that the sheets have a good airing 
for me, against midnight or thereabout, there s a good 
woman ?" 



54 SEVEN STORIES. 

" The house niver gives damp sheets, surr." 

" Its a igh feather these Irish maids wear in their 
caps," said he as the landlady disappeared. 

We fell presently to discussion of the mutton, and to 
the relative merits of the Southdowns and of the little 
moor-fed sheep one meets with in Ireland, in which I 
found he was as thoroughly English in his tastes, as in 
his appearance. We talked of the bog, of the potatoe 
disease, of the poor-rates ; an hour passed thus, and 
finally we came back to the weather and the Christmas 
season ; " not just the season," I observed, " that an 
Englishman usually chooses to while away in a damp 
inn." 

" Quite right," said he, as he went on compounding 
a punch from a few fragrant materials brought up from 
the tap ; " quite right as you say, and a damp ride on 
such a night as this, is worse than the inn and the 
punch." 

This latter cheered him, and invited a more per 
sonal chat than he had yet indulged in. 

4 It is to Armagh you are going to night ? " said I. 

" Thereabout," said he ; " and I may tell you, now 
that we ve tasted the punch together your good elth, 
sir that if I find the man I m in search of, and if he s 
the man I take him for, this will be the merriest Christ 
mas eve I ve passed in twenty years time." 

" Indeed," said I, rather startled by a certain pathos 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 55 

in his tone which I had not before recognised ; " some 
old friend, perhaps ? " 

" Not a bit of it not one bit; never saw him in 
my life. The oddest thing in the world." 

This was said rather to himself than to me, and he 
relapsed into a musing mood, which I did not feel at 
liberty for a time to interrupt. 

"It s not the first mystery that s perplexed me to 
day," said I, half laughingly, as the stranger lifted his 
head again. 

" Ah, indeed and pray, if I may be so bold, what s 
the other ?" 

" Come to the window and perhaps I can show you" 
said I. The December evenings in the North of 
Ireland are terribly long. Our own candles had been 
lighted since three of the afternoon ; and as I pulled 
. aside the curtain, the street lamps and shop fronts were 
all cheerfully ablaze. Over the watch-makers, in the 
window where my chief observation of the morning had 
centered there was no lamp burning, but there was a 
ruddy glow in the room, such as a well lighted grate-full 
of coals might throw out. 

" Do you see ? " said 1, " over the way ? There s a 
dog lying before the fire." 

" Aye, aye, I see." 

" And there s a woman in the shadow by the 
hearth." 



56 SEVEN STORIES. 

" Quite right, I can make out her figure." 

And there s a pair of children ; you see how the 
fire-light reddens up their faces ?" 

"Aye, aye, chubby rogues God bless me, I had 
such once. And that s the father I suppose, from the 
way they lean upon him and tug at his waistcoat ? " 

" There s the mystery," says I. 

" Oho ! " 

" Does he look like a murderer ? " said I. 

" Bless my soul ! murderer ! What do you mean ? " 

I dropped the curtains, and when we had taken our 
places again before the fire, I detailed to him the inci 
dents of the morning. He seemed to enjoy immensely 
the oddity of the whole thing, and chiefly the assurance 
of the gaunt old Flaherty, who brought up a murderer 
from the bottom of the North Sea to drive straight into 
town on such a dreary December day. 

"But whose was this murder?" says my com 
panion, with a sudden, thoughtful check to his hilarity. 

" Dormont, was the name I think." 

The man gave a sudden start. " Bless me ! Ben 
Dormont ! I began to suspect as much. Why do you 
know I knew him like a brother ; in fact he was my 
wife *s brother ; and lived away here in the North of 
Ireland ; aye, Ben Dormont ; he was murdered true 
enough ; but its not our friend over yonder that did it. 
There was a story I know that some young Belfast-man 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 57 

killed him, and they tracked him to Cork ; but he, poor 
fellow, went down in the Londonderry sure enough 
the very ship ; they re right there. But the man 
who killed Dormont was Pat Eagan, who died in Ingy 



three years gone. My son you must know, is sergeant 
in Her Majesty s forty-third, and Pat was one of his 
men enlisted in Ingy. He fell sick of the fever there, 
and at the last wanted a priest, and a magistrate, and 
made a clean breast of it. My boy sent home copies 
of all the papers ; if the Flaherty wants them to clear 
up the name of her drowned friend, she shall have 
them." 

I must confess to a strong feeling of relief at this 
revelation ; for in spite of myself I was beginning to 
feel a warm interest in the people over the way, and 
had been oppressed with an uncomfortable sense of the 
Flaherty s earnestness, and of her " iligant mimory." 

But there was another little episode connected with 
the story of the murder, as the landlord had detailed it, 
which perhaps my English companion might throw 
light upon ; indeed, I had my suspicions, that he had 
purposely waived all allusion to it. But my curiosity 
overbore, for the time, all sense of delicacy. 

" If I remember rightly," said I, carelessly, " there 
was a young woman associated in some way with the 
story of this Dormont murder ? " 

The old gentleman s face quivered ; for a moment 
3* 



58 SEVEN STORIES. 

he seemed to hesitate how he should meet the question ; 
then he broke out in a tone of passionate bitterness : 

" Aye sir, you ve heard it ; you ve heard she was 
a wanton, and I fear it was God s truth ; you ve heard 
her father shut his door upon her, and I wish my hand 
had withered before I did it. You ve heard she died 
in the workus God forgive me ; my daughter, sir ; 
my poor, wretched Jane ! " 

Patrick tapped at the door and said the fly was 
ready. 

The old gentleman sat by the fire leaning for 
ward, and with his face buried in his hands. Pres 
ently he rose, with his composure partly restored again. 
" You know now," said he, approaching me, " why 
I ve had many a weary Christmas ; but I ve a faint 
hope left ; and I m in chase of it to-night. I told you 
my boy heard of the confession of Pat Eagan, and 
went to see him before he died. He told him who he 
was, and asked if he could tell him the truth about 
Jane. Is she alive or dead ? said Pat. Dead, 
said my boy. I don t know all the truth/ said Pat, 
but there s a man in Ingy can right her name if he 
will ; and his name is James Bonneford. And my boy 
wrote me that he hunted that man through the country, 
as he would have hunted a deer : now he heard of him, 
now he didnt hear of him. There were two years or 
more of this, when he wrote me (and the letter only 



WET DAT AT AN IRISH INN. 59 

came a week ago) that the man had gone to Ireland, 
on his way to Ameriky ; and that he might be heard 
of about Armagh. That s my errand to night." 

" God help you," said I. 

And he drew on his galoshes, buttoned up his mack 
intosh, bade me good evening, and presently I heard 
the fly rattling away up the street. 

I stirred the fire, drew my chair before it, and was 
meditating another attack upon the county Gazetteer, 
when Patrick appeared with a slip of paper which he 
handed me, and says " It s a man below steers, as 
would loike a worrd with the gintleman in the Welling 
ton parlor." 

I turned the paper to the light " James Bonne- 
ford," in a full, bold hand was written on it. It was 
my English companion of the dinner, doubtless, the man 
was in search of; but how on earth could he have got 
wind of his arrival ? The mysteries of the day were 
thickening on me. 

As I walked leisurely down the stairs, I overheard 
violent and excited talk from the tap-room ; and from 
the chance words that caught my ear, I saw that 
Mistress Flaherty s suspicions of the morning were 
meeting active discussion. Mr. Bonneford could wait 
surely, until I learned what course the altercation was 
taking. A half dozen of the neighbors had strolled in, 
and among them, with a terribly excited face, I saw 
the object of suspicion himself. 



60 SEVEN STORIES. 

"And who is it says Mike Carlingford s come 
home ? " says he, challenging the company with a de 
fiant air. 

" Its Mee stress Flaherty/* says one. 

" Flaherty be d ! " said the man. " Didn t Mike 
Carlingford go down with the Londonderry, eight years 
ago?" 

" Moike, Moike," said the Flaherty pressing for 
ward, " don t forswear yourself, if ye did rap the old 
man on the head. It s Moike ye are ; and if I was 
hanged for it, Fd say it, and may the Lord have mercy 
on ye ! " 

There was an earnestness, and directness in the old 
woman s tones that carried conviction to the neighbors. 

The man saw it only too clearly, and his jaw droop 
ed ; the color left his face ; I thought he would have 
fallen ; but he rallied, and said in a subdued tone all 
his defiance gone " it s not you 11 be hanged, Mistress 
Flaherty: it s me they d be afther hanging. They 
chased me out of Ireland, and only the Lord saved me 
when the Londonderry went down, and I thought shure 
He would have made it right before long ; but he hasn t. 
For I m as innocent of that murder as the babe that s 
unborn." 

" I belave ye, Moike," said the Flaherty ; " now I 
look at yer and hear ye say it by my sowl and I be 
lave ye, Moike." 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 6 1 

" You are quite right. I think, my good woman, * 
said I. And thereupon I detailed to them the particu 
lars which I had learned from the Englishman above 
stairs ; and I think I never made a little speech which 
was more approved. 

"Thank God thank God!" said Mike, while a 
half dozen, and the Flaherty foremost, crowded about 
him to give his hand a shake. 

" Now, for the little woman !" said Mike, springing 
away. 

" He was married then," said a voice. 

* c Aye," said Mike starting back, " who dares to say 
she wasn t ? Married a fortnight before the cursed 
murder ; twas that took me so often to the house ; and 
the very night, Janey pulls away my badge, and says 
Mike don t be afther wearing these ribbons they ll get 
you in trouble ; and she threw it to Touser that was 
lying under the table, and the dog followed me out that 
night, and there, near to the gate, he found the old man, 
and hung by him. But Touser has made the bad job 
good to me ; there s niver a man or woman in Ireland 
or England, not excepting her own father, that s been 
so kind to the children, ever since they were born, as 
* that dog." 

" Children ! " says Flaherty, " and by my sowl, I 
consated it long ago ; them girrls is twins ! " 

" A brace of them," says Mike, " and I never saw 



62 SEVEN STORIES. 

their blessed faces till this day noon ; and now they ll 
have an honest name to carry : it s this that s borne so 
hard upon the little woman : for at the very last I said 
to her, " Janey, whatever befals, mind ye wait till God 
clears it up, before you do the naming : it s better a 
child should have none, than a murderer s." And with 
that, and shouting merry Christmas to all of them, 
Mike dashed out, and across the street again. 

Of course I had forgotten all about Mr. Bonneford ; 
I suspected who he must be ; Patrick made the matter 
clear " And shure its Moike, hisself ; isn t it written 
Moike ? " (looking at the slip of paper in my hand.) 
44 He said he d be jist afther thanking the gintleman that 
sent over the cakes the mornin ." 

" All right, Patrick ; and now Patrick put some 
fresh coals on the fire in the u Wellington," and ask the 
Flaherty to bring me two or three sheets of paper, ink 
stand and pens." 

I had been writing an hour or two perhaps, when I 
heard the rattle of a fly below, and remembered that 
my dinner friend must be nearly due, on his return. In 
he came presently, thoroughly fagged, heart-sick, and 
moody. 

4 I am afraid you ve been unsuccessful," I said. 

44 My boy has been deceived," said he. " The only 
Bonnefords about Armagh, are a quiet family, that I 
went blundering upon with a story about Ingy, and 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 63 

James Bonneford, till I believe they thought me a mad 
man ; I m not far from it, God knows !" 

" Cheer up my good friend" said I, u a visitor has 
been in since you left, about whom you ll be glad to 
hear ; " and I tossed the strip of paper toward him. 
The old gentleman took out his spectacles, and spelled 
it letter by letter, " James Bonneford ! what does all 
this mean ?" says he in a maze. 

" It means this," said I, " that James Bonneford is 
only the name that Mike Carlingford wore in India to 
escape suspicion and pursuit ; and this Mike Carlingford 
is the legal husband of your daughter Jane (the old 
man s face lighted here with the gladdest smile I ever 
saw) and they are both now over the way, with their 
children (here the old man s face grew fairly radiant) 
and I daresay, if they knew you were here, they would 
invite you to pass Christmas eve with them." 

There was dead silence for a moment. 

" No they wouldnt no they wouldn t," fairly 
blubbered the old man ; then turning upon me, with 
something of his former manner, " You re not playing 
me unfair ? It s all true you are telling me ? " 

" As true as that you are sitting before me." 

The old gentleman leaped from his chair, and made 
a dash into the hall turned again, came back with his 
broad-brim drawn far over his brow his lips twitching 
nervously, and muttering " I ve treated her like a brute 
like a brute indeed I have." 



64 SEVEN STORIES. 

" I know you have, my good friend," said I, " and 
its quite time you began to treat her like a woman and 
a daughter." 

" That s what I will," said he, taking courage and 
moving away. 

" One moment ; " 

I wrote upon a slip of paper ; CHRISTMAS EVE is 
A GOOD TIME TO FORGIVE INJURIES. I folded it, and 
begged him to take it across the street, with the compli 
ments of the season from the Wellington parlor : " There 
was a little gift for the girls in the morning," said I, 
" and this is for the Papa." 

I hope it may have had its effect : it is quite certain 
that something did ; for I saw no more of my dinner 
companion that night ; and when I looked out of my 
chamber window at eight o clock next morning, who 
should I see upon the sunny side of the street (it had 
cleared over-night), but the same old gentleman, beam 
ing with smiles, leading a little grandchild by each 
hand, and the dog " Touser" following after, with a 
very mystified air. 

And when I took the coach for Drogheda, as I did 
at nine, a rosy cheeked little girl came running over 
with a merry Christmas for me (which I met with a 
kiss), and a sprig of Holly tied with white ribbon, which 
I placed in my button hole and kept there through all 
that lonely ride. At night, I transferred it to my note 



WET DAY AT AN IRISH INN. 65 

book, and it is from its crumbling leaves, lying there 
still, that I have fanned this little story of an Irish- 
Christmas into shape. 



SECOND STORY: 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE, 



) 



SECOND STORY: 



Account of a Consulate. 

JULIUS CAESAR was a Consul, and the first Bo 
naparte ; and so was I. 

I do not think that I am possessed of any very ex 
traordinary ambition. I like comfort, I like mush 
rooms ; (truffles I do not like) . I think Lafitte is a 
good wine, and wholesome. Gin is not to my taste, 
and I never attended caucuses. Therefore, I had nev 
er entertained great expectations of political preferment, 
and lived for a considerable period of years without any 
hopes in that way, and with a very honest indifference. 

And yet, when my name actually appeared in the 
newspapers, as named by appointment of the President, 

Consul to Blank, I felt, I will confess (if I may use 

such an expression), an unusual expansion. I felt con 
fident that I had become on a sudden the subject of a 
good deal of not unnatural envy. I excused people for 
it, and never thought of blaming or of resenting it. 



70 SEVEN STORIES. 

My companions in the e very-day walks of life, I treat 
ed, I am satisfied, with the same consideration as 
before. 

In short, I concealed my elation as much as pos 
sible, and only indulged the playful elasticity of my 
spirits in a frequent private perusal of that column 
of the New York Times which made the announcement 
of my appointment, and where my name appeared 
in print, associated with those of the distinguished Mr. 
Soule, Mr. Greaves (I believe), Mr. Daniels, Mr. 
Brown, Mr. McCrea, and a great many others. 

I cannot accurately describe my feelings when the 
postmaster of our town (a smart gentleman of great 
tact, but now turned out), handed me a huge packet 
from the Department of State, franked by Mr. Marcy 
(evidently his own hand had traced the lines), sealed 
with the large seal of the Department, and addressed to 

me, Mr. Blank, Consul of the United States for 

Blank. I took the postmaster by the hand and en 
deavored to appear cool. I think I made some casual 
remark about the weather. Good heavens, what a 
hypocrite ! 

I broke open the packet with emotion. It contained 
a notice (I think it was in the Secretary s hand) of my 

appointment to Blank. It contained a printed 

list of foreign ministers and consuls, in which my name 
was entered in writing. In the next issue, I was sure it 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 71 

would appear in print. It contained a published pam 
phlet (quite thin) of instructions. It contained a circular, 
on paper of a blue tinge, recommending modest dress. 
I liked the friendly way in which the recommendation 
was conveyed ; not absolutely compelling, but advising 
a black coat, and black pantaloons. In the warmth 
of my grateful feelings at that time, I think I should 
have vowed compliance if the Secretary had advised 
saffron shorts, and a sky-blue tail-coat. 

There was, beside, in the packet a blank of a bond, 
to be filled up in the sum of two thousand dollars, as a 
kind of guarantee for the safe return of such con 
sular property as I might find at Blank. I was 

gratified at being able to render such a substantial 
evidence of my willingness to incur risks for the 
sake of my country, and of the Administration. It was 
necessary, however, that two good bondsmen should 
sign the instrument with me. I knew I should have no 
difficulty in finding them. I asked two of my friends to 
come forward in the matter. They came forward 
promptly ; and without an arriere-pensee (to make use 
of an apt foreign expression) they put their names to 
the bond. I should be tempted to give their names 
here, did I not know their modesty would be offended 
by public notice. 

I sent the instrument to Washington in a large en 
velope, with a mention in one corner, in my own hand- 



72 SEVEN STORIES. 

writing, " Official Business" I did not drop it into 
the outside box of the office, but presented it with my 
own hands through the trap to the clerk. The clerk 
read the address, and turned toward me with a look 
of consideration that I never saw upon his face before. 
And yet (so deceitful is human pride), I blew my nose 
as if nothing of importance had happened ! I knew 
that the clerk would mention the circumstance of the 
" Official" letter to the second clerk, and that both 
would look at me with wonder when they next met me 
in the street, or gazed on me in my pew at the church. 
In short, I cannot describe my feelings. 

A few days after, I received one or two letters in 
handwriting unknown to me ; they proved to be appli 
cations for clerkships in my consular bureau. I replied 
to them in a civil, but perhaps rather stately manner, 
informing the parties that I was not yet aware of the 
actual income of the office, but if appearances were 
favorable, I promised to communicate further. 

A friend suggested to me that perhaps, before as 
suming so important a trust, it would be well to make 
a short trip to the seat of government, and confer per 
sonally with the members of the Cabinet. The sug 
gestion seemed to me judicious. I should in this way 
be put in possession of the special views of the Admin 
istration, and be better able to conduct the business of 
my office, in agreement with the Government views of 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 73 

international policy, and the interests of the world gen 
erally. It is true, the cost of the journey would be 
something, but it was not a matter to be thought of in 
an affair of so grave importance. I therefore went to 
"Washington. 

In a city where so many consuls are (I might say) 
annually appointed, it was not to be expected that my 
arrival would create any unusual stir. Indeed it did 
not. If I might be allowed the expression of opinion 
on such a point. I think that the inn-keeper gave me 
a room very near the roof for a consul. I called al 
most immediately on my arrival at the office of the 
Secretary of State. I was told that the Secretary of 
State was engaged, but was recommended by his door 
keeper to enter my name at the bottom of a long list in 
his possession, in order that I might secure my turn for 
admittance. I represented my official character to the 
door-keeper. I could not discover that his countenance 
altered in the least ; he, however, kindly offered to pre 
sent me at the door of the consular bureau. 

The gentlemen of that department received me gra 
ciously, and congratulated me, I thought, in a somewhat 
gleeful manner, considering their responsible positions, 
upon my appointment. At my request they showed me 
some communications which were on file from the con 
sular office I was destined to fill. There were a few 
letters on foolscap, and a few on note paper. They did 
4 



74 SEVEN STORIES, 

not seem to me to come up altogether to the u Instruc 
tions." I made a remark to that effect, which appeared 
to be unobserved. 

Among other papers was a list of the effects belong 
ing to the consular office at Blank. It read, if I 

remember rightly : 

" One SmaU Flag. 

" One Brass Stamp. 

" One Pewter do. 

" Two Books of Record. 

" Nine Blank Passports. 

" One broken-legged Table. 

" Two Office Stools (old). 

" One Arms (good condition)." 

I must say I was surprised at this list. It seemed 
to me there was some discrepancy between the two 
thousand dollar bond I had signed, and the value of the 
effects of which I was to come into possession. It 
seemed to me, however, that furniture and things of 
that sort might be dear in so distant a country. I had 
no doubt they were. I hinted as much to the clerk in 
attendance. 

He said he thought they might be. 

" Nous verrons" said I, at which he smiled and said, 
" Oh, you know the language, then ?" 

I said I should know it ; only the place was Italian, 
and the remark I had just made was in the French lan 
guage. 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 75 

" Oh dear, well," said he, " I don t think it makes 
any difference." 

I told him " I hoped it wouldn t." 

" Its rare they know the language," said he, picking 
a bit of lint off from his coat-sleeve. 

I felt encouraged at this. 

"Only take a small dictionary along," continued 
he. 

I asked if there was one belonging to the office ? 

He thought not. 

I asked him, then, how much he thought the place 
was worth ? 

At this he politely showed me an old account of 
" returns." It seemed to be a half-yearly account, 
though some of the half-years were skipped apparently, 
and the others, I really thought, might as well have 
been skipped. Indeed I was not a little taken aback 
at the smallness of the sums indicated. I daresay I 
showed as much in my face, for the clerk told me, in a 
confidential way, that he doubted if the returns were 
full. He thought they might be safely doubled. I 
thought, for my own part, that there would not be much 
safety in doubling them even. 

The clerk further hinted, that within a short time 
such positions would be of more value ; there was to be 
a revisal of the consular system. 

I told him I had heard so ; as, indeed, I had, any 



76 SEVEN STORIES. 

time and many times within the last ten or fifteen years. 
Beside which there was my country ! 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead " 

(to quote a popular piece of poetry), who would not 
serve his country, even if the fees are small ? 

And again, the returns were doubtless misrepre 
sented : indeed, I had heard of a private boast from a 
late incumbent of the post, to the effect that " he had 
lived in clover." I had no doubt, in my own mind, 
that the Government had, in some way, paid for the 
clover. 

I was disappointed, finally, in respect to an inter 
view with the Secretary of State. I had the honor, 
however, while at Washington, of a presentation to the 
Under-Secretary. I do not think that he was aware of 
my appointment, or, indeed, that he had ever heard of 
me before ; though he made a kind effort to recall me 
to remembrance ; and, in any event was pleased (he 
said) to make my acquaintance. He expressed him 
self to the effect that men of character were needed for 
Government offices. 

I told him I thought they were. 

The instructions ordered that I should give informa 
tion to the Department of the time of my sailing for my 
foreign destination, with the name of the port at which 
I was to embark, and of the ship. This I did as the 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 77 

instructions enjoined upon foolscap. I must not omit 
to mention, that I was provided with a special passport 
not, indeed, bearing the usual insignia of the eagle 
and darts, but an autograph passport, designating in 
good English my rank and destination, and inviting 
foreign Governments generally to show me the atten 
tion due to my official capacity. 

I put this in my portmanteau, together with a pock 
et edition of VATTEL On the Law of Nations, for private 
reference, and also a small dictionary. With these, I 
bade my friends adieu, shaking them cheerfully by the 
hand, and from the poop of the ship waved a farewell 
to my country. The professed travel- writers such as 
Bayard Taylor describe these things a great deal bet 
ter. I can only say that, with a very bitter feeling in 
my chest, I went below, where I remained the most of 
the time until we reached the other side. 

TThen I arrived in France where I was not per 
sonally known I trusted very much to the extraordi 
nary passport which I carried, and which I had no doubt 
would make considerable impression upon the officials. 
Indeed, a timid man who had made the voyage with 
me, and who was in some way made aware of my con 
sular capacity (though I never hinted it myself,) ven 
tured to hope that I would give him my assistance in 
case his papers were not all right. I promised I would 
do so. I may say that I felt proud of the application. 



78 SEVEN STORIES. 

I walked with great confidence into the little receiv 
ing-room of the police, guided by two soldiers who wore 
caps very much like a reversed tin-kettle, and presented 
my special passport. The chief of the office looked at 
it in a very hard manner, and then passed it to his 
neighbor. I was certainly prepared for a look of con 
sideration on their part. On the contrary, I thought 
they examined me with a good deal of impertinent 
scrutiny. 

At length one of them said, with an air of confi 
dence, " Vous etes Anglais?" You are English? 

I could not help saying using the French form of 
expression " Mon Dieu ! no ! " 

And I proceeded to tell him what I really was, and 
that the passport was an American passport, and of an 
official character. The officers looked at it again, and 
seemed to consult for a while together ; at length one 
said, " C est egal it s all the same " asked me my 
name, and, with some hesitation, placed his seal upon 
the instrument. In this way I was let into France. 
The timid man who had voyaged with me, had, mean 
time, sidled away. I suspect he must have gone up to 
Paris by an early train, for I did not meet with him 
again. I hope he had no trouble. 

There was not very much made of my dignity in 
any part of France ; but not being accredited to that 
country, I felt no resentment, and enjoyed Paris perhaps 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 79 

as much as any merely private citizen coiild do. To 
prevent, however, any mistake in future about my pass 
port, I printed in large characters and in the French 
language, upon the envelope, "Passport of Blank, Con 
sul of the United States of America, for Blank/ 

This was a good hit, and was, I found, readily un 
derstood. The landlord, with whom I staid while in 
Paris (an obliging man) made up his bill against the 
title in full. It was pleasant to have recognition. 

I continued my journey in excellent spirits. I think 
it was on the road through Switzerland that I fell in 
with a chatty personage in the coupe of the diligence ; 
and having at one time to hand my passport to a soldier 
at a frontier station, the paper came under the eye of 
my companion of the coupe. He was charmed to have 
the honor of my acquaintance. He expressed an exces 
sive admiration for my country and my fellow-members 
of the Government. 

I asked him if he had ever been in the United States ? 
He said he had not ; but he had a friend, he told me, 
who once touched at Guadaloupe, and found the climate 
delightful. 

I told him, in all kindness, that the United States 
did not reach as far as that. 

"Comment?" said he. 

I repeated, that at the time I left, the West Indies 
were not included in the United States. 



80 SEVEN STORIES. 

" 07i, gd arrivera!" said he; and he made a pro 
gressive gesture with his two hands, as if he would em 
brace the flank of the diligence horses. 

He asked me if the country was generally flat ? 

I told him it was a good deal so. 

"But, mon Dieu!" said he, "what fevers and 
steamboats you have vous avez Id las I " 

In short, he proved a very entertaining companion ; 
and upon our arrival at the station of the Customs, he 
presented me, with a good deal of ceremony, to the 
presiding officer as the Consul of the United States. 
It was the first time (indeed, one of the few times) 
upon which I had received official recognition. The 
Customsman bowed twice, and I bowed twice in return. 
The presentation proved very serviceable to me, as 
it was the means of relieving me from a very serious 
difficulty shortly after. 

My passport, as I have already remarked, was 
wholly in manuscript ; and the only characters at all 
conspicuous in it were those which made up the name 
of " WM. L. MABCY." I do not mean to attribute to 
that gentleman the vanity of wishing to appear more 
important than the Consul, even in the instrument with 
which I was fortified. But the truth was, that the Sec 
retary of State s signature, being in his stout autograph, 
was quite noticeable in contrast with the light, clerkly 
flourishes by which it was surrounded. 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 81 

In short, it was presumed at the guard-house that 
my papers gave protection if they gave protection to 
anybody (which seems to have been doubted) to Mr. 
Wm. L. Marcy. I was entered, therefore, upon the 
police record under that name. But on discovery of 
the fact that my luggage bore a different address, it 
was further presumed that Mr. Marcy had purloined 
the effects of another party ; and under this apprehen 
sion, I came very near being placed in confinement. 

I explained the matter eagerly, but had considerable 
difficulty in making the officials understand that I was 
really not Mr. Marcy ; and not being Mr. Marcy, could 
not be accused of any misdeeds attributable to that gen 
tleman. I furthermore explained, as well as I was 
able, that Mr. Marcy was a grand homme (and here the 
French came gracefully to my aid) that he was, in 
short, a man of great distinction highly esteemed in 
the country from which I came, and absolutely retained 
there by his official duties, making it utterly impossible 
for him to be travelling just now upon the Continent of 
Europe, even with his own luggage setting aside the 
calumny of his having taken possession of another 
man s. 

I fear, however, that all would have been of no 
avail, if the Customsman had not been sent for, and 
had not come gallantly to my relief. I was indebted to 
him under Providence for my escape. 
4* 



82 SEVEN STORIES. 

Upon arrival at my port of destination, I was evi 
dently regarded with considerable suspicion. In com 
mon with some fifty others, I was packed in a small 
barrack-room until decision should be had upon our 
papers of admission. After very much earnest study 
of my passport, both within and without, the chief of 
the examining department (who was a scholarly man 
deputed for that employment) seemed to understand that 
I had come in the professed quality of Consul. 

He asked me, in a solemn tone, if the fact was as 
he had surmised ? 

I told him. eagerly, that he was quite correct. 

Upon this he gave me a ticket of admission, author 
izing me to enter the town, and advising me to apply 
in two days time at the bureau of police for my pass 
port or a permit of residence. 

I took lodgings at a respectable hotel, and was pres 
ently found out by a shrewd fellow (a Swiss, I think), 
who executed the languages for the house. He wished 
to know if I would like to engage him for c the sights. 

I replied in a playful way disguising as much as 
possible my dignity that I was to stop some time ; 
that I was, in short, Consul for the United States, and 
should probably have many leisure opportunities. 

He felt sure I would. He took off his hat, and 
showed tokens of respect for the office which I never 
met with before nor since. 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 83 

I beg to recommend him to any party travelling in 
that direction ; his name is, I think, Giacomo Guarini ; 
aged forty-five, and broad in the shoulders, with a slight 
lisp in his English. 

By his advice I called at the bureau of the police, 
where I made known my quality of Consul. They were 
sorry, the officials said, that they had no information 
of that kind. I expressed some surprise, and stated 
that I had the honor to bring the information myself 
alluding to the passport. 

They observed that, though this information was 
very good for me, as coming from my Government, it 
was hardly so good for them, who awaited all such in 
formation from their Government. Not having yet con 
sulted Vattel very thoroughly, I did not deem it prudent 
to reply hastily to this first diplomatic proposition. If, 
indeed, there had been an eagle on the passport ! 

The officials informed me that, if I wished to stay 
in the town, I could do so by paying ten zwanzigers 
(about a dollar and a half our money) for a permit. 

I asked how it would be if I purchased no such 
permit ? 

In that case I must leave (though it was very kindly 
expressed) . 

I reflected that, all things considered, it would be 
better to stay. My experience with my passport, thus 
far, had not been such as to warrant any great reliance 



84 SEVEN STORIES. 

on that instrument. Indeed, I think I should advise a 
friend anticipating travel (for pleasure) , to provide him 
self with a private passport. 

This point being settled, I looked over my official 
papers and found a letter addressed by the Secretary of 
State to the " Present Incumbent" of the office, request 
ing him to deliver into my keeping the seals, flags, 
stools, and arms of the office. 

I made inquiries regarding him. Nobody about 
the hotel seemed to know him, or, indeed, ever to have 
heard of him. I had fortunately a private letter to a 
banker of the town (exceedingly useful to me afterward) . 
I called upon him, and renewed my inquiries. He 

regretted, he said, to inform me that Mr. , the 

late acting Consul, had only the last week committed 
suicide by jumping out of his office-window into the 
dock. 

I must confess that I was shocked by this announce 
ment. I hoped it was not owing to any embarrassments 
arising out of his official position. The banker, who 
was a polite man, regretted that he could not inform me. 

I must not omit to mention that the letter of the 
Secretary of State, requesting the supposed incumbent 
to deliver up the papers, the seals, the stools, etc., con 
tained (through some error of the clerk) the name of 
some other person than myself as the proper recipient ; 
so that I had, from the time of my landing in Europe, 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 85 

entertained considerable doubt about the success of my 
application. It was then with a feeling of some relief 
tempered by humane regrets that I learned of the un 
timely fate of the individual to whom the official demand 
was addressed. I at once destroyed the letter which 
might have invalidated my claim, and pursued my in 
quiries in regard to the papers, the flag, the stamps, and 
the stools. 

Through the kindness of my banker I succeeded in 
tracing them to the office of a Jewish ship-broker, whom 
I found wrapped in a bear-skin coat, and smoking a 
very yellow meerschaum. He spoke English charm 
ingly. He said he had succeeded (I could scarce tell 
how) to the late incumbent. 

I asked about the suicide. 

The Israelite tapped his forehead with his skinny 
fore-finger, waved it back and forth for a moment, and 
left me in a very distressing state of perplexity. 

I asked after the flag, the sign-board, the table, etc. 
He said they were deposited in his garret, and should be 
delivered up whenever I desired. He informed me fur 
ther that he knew of my appointment through a para 
graph in GaUgnani s Messenger. It seemed an odd way 
of establishing my claim, to be sure ; but from the ex 
perience I had already found with my passport, I thought 
it was not worth while to shake the Jewish gentleman s 
belief by referring him to that instrument. 



86 SEVEN STORIES. 

I borrowed the ship-broker s seal the consular seal 
and addressed a note to the chief authority of the port 
(in obedience to home instructions), informing him of 
my appointment. I furthermore addressed a large let 
ter to the Department/ acquainting them with my safe 
arrival, and with the sad bereavement of the State in 
the loss of the late acting Consul. (I learned afterward 
that he had been a small ship-broker, of Hebrew ex 
traction, and suspected of insanity.) 

The governor of the port replied to me after a few 
days, informing me, courteously, that whenever the 
Central Government should be pleased to recognise my 
appointment, he would acquaint me with that fact. 

My next object was to find lodgings ; and as the 
instructions enjoined attendance from ten until four, it 
was desirable that the office should be an agreeable one, 
and, if possible, contiguous to sleeping quarters. 

The old Jewish gentleman, indeed, kindly offered to 
relieve me of all the embarrassments of the business ; 
but I showed him a copy of the new instructions, which 
would not admit of my taking into employ any other 
than a naturalized citizen. I thought he seemed amused 
at this ; he certainly twisted his tongue within his cheek 
in a very peculiar manner. Still he was courteous. 

I succeeded at length in finding very airy quarters, 
with a large office connected with the sleeping apart 
ment by a garden. A bell-rope was attached to the office 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 87 

door, and the bell being upon the exterior wall, within 
the garden, could be distinctly heard throughout the 
apartment. This arrangement proved a very conve 
nient one. As only three or four American ships were 
understood to arrive in the course of the year, and as 
the office was damp and mouldy being just upon the 
water s side I did not think it necessary (viewing the 
bell) to remain there constantly from ten until four. I 
sincerely hope that the latitude which I took in this re 
spect will be looked on favorably by the Home Govern 
ment. Indeed, considering the frequent travel of my 
fellow-diplomats the past season, I think I may without 
exaggeration presume upon indulgence. 

I remained quietly one or two weeks waiting for 
recognition. Occasionally I walked down by the outer 
harbor to enjoy the sight of an American bark which 
just then happened to be in port, and whose commander 
I had the honor of meeting at the office of the Jewish 
ship-broker. 

After six weeks of comparative quietude broken 
only by mailing an occasional large letter* to the De 
partment I assumed, under official sanction, the bold 

* It should be mentioned that Government now generously 
assumes the cost of all paper, wax, ink, and steel pens consumed in 
the consular service. I believe the consular system is indebted for 
this to the liberal administrative capacity of Mr. Edward Everett, 
late of the State Department. 



88 SEVEN STORIES. 

step of taking possession of the seals, the papers, the 
stools, the flag, and the arms. They were conveyed to 
me, on the twelfth of the month, in a boat. I shall not 
soon forget the occasion. The sun shone brightly. The 
" arms" filled up the bow of the skiff; the papers, the 
stools, and the flag, were lying in the stern-sheets. I 
felt a glow at sight of the flag, though it was small and 
somewhat torn. If the office should prove lucrative, I 
determined to buy another at my own cost. The sign 
board, or " arms" was large larger than any I had yet 
seen in the place ; much larger than the Imperial arms 
over the Governor s doors. I should say it must have 
been six feet long by four broad. The eagle was grand, 
and soared upon a blue sky ; the olive branch, in imita 
tion of nature, was green ; the darts of a lively red. 
And yet, I must admit, it seemed to me out of all 

proportion to the flag and to the shipping. I thought it 

&gt; 

must have been ordered by a sanguine man. It re 
minded me of what I had heard of the United States 
arms, erected in the Crystal Palace of London. I fear 
ed it was too large for the business. I never liked, I 
must confess, that sort of disproportion. If I might use 
a figurative expression, I should say that I had never 
a great fancy for those fowls which crow loudly, but 
never lay any eggs. 

If the " arms " had been of ordinary size, I should 
have raised it upon my roof. My serving man was 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 89 

anxious to do so. But I reflected that only one Amer 
ican ship was then in port ; that it was quite uncertain 
when another would arrive. I reflected that the office- 
furniture was inconsiderable ; even one of the stools al 
luded to in the official list brought to my notice at 
Washington, had disappeared ; and instead of nine 
blank passports there were now only seven. I therefore 
retained the sign in my office, though it filled up valu 
able space there. I gave a formal receipt for the flag, 
the stamps, the arms, the stool, the table, the record 
books, and for a considerable budget of old papers in a 
very tattered condition. 

Two days after, I received a bill from the late Jew 
ish incumbent to the amount of twenty-five dollars, for 
repairs to flag and " arms." Having already given a 
receipt for the same, and communicated intelligence 
thereof to the seat of government, I felt reluctantly 
compelled to decline payment ; I proposed, however, to 
forward the bill to the Department with all the neces 
sary vouchers. The Jewish broker finding the matter 
was assuming this serious aspect, told me that the fee 
was a usual one on a change of consulate ; and assured 
me jocularly, that as the consulate was changed on an 
average every eighteen months, the sign-board was the 
most profitable part of the business. I observed, in 
deed, that the paint was very thick upon it ; and it ap 
peared to have been spliced on one or two occasions. 



90 SEVEN STORIES. 

There arrived, not long after, to my address, by the 
way of the Marseilles steamer, a somewhat bulky pack 
age. I conjectured that it contained a few knick-knacks, 
which I had requested a friend to forward to me from a 
home port. By dint of a heavy bribe to the customs 
men, added to the usual port charges, I succeeded in 
securing its delivery without delay. It proved to be a 
set of the United States Statutes at Large, heavily bound 
in law calf. A United States eagle was deeply branded 
upon the backs of the volumes. There was evidently a 
distrust of the consular character. The thought of this, 
in connection with the late suicide, affected me pain 
fully. I thought looking upon the effects around me 
that I should not like to be reduced so far as to rob 
my consulate ! 

I found many hours of amusement in looking over 
the records of the office ; they were very brief, especially 
in the letter department. And on comparing the condi 
tion of the records with my consular instructions, I was 
struck with an extraordinary discrepancy. The law, 
for instance, enjoined copies to be made of all letters 
dispatched from the office ; but with the exception of 
three or four, dated some fifteen years back, I could not 
find that any had been entered. Indeed, one of my 
predecessors had taken a very short, and as it seemed 
to me, a very ingenious method of recording correspond 
ence in this way : 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 91 

"April 1. Wrote Department, informing them of 
arrival. 

" June 5. Wrote the Governor. 

" June 7. Received reply from the Governor, say 
ing he had got my letter. 

" June 9. Wrote the Governor, blowing up the 
postoffice people for breaking open my letters. 

" July. Wrote home for leave of absence, and quit 
the office." 

I think it was about a week after the installment of 
the flag and arms in my office, that I received a very 
voluminous packet from a native of the port, who gave 
me a great many titles, and informed me in the language 
of the country (in exceedingly fine writing), that he was 
the discoverer of a tremendous explosive machine, cal 
culated to destroy fleets at a great distance, and to put 
an end to all marine warfare. He intimated that he 
was possessed of republican feelings, and w^ould dispose 
of his discovery to the United States for a considera 
tion. After a few days during which I had accom 
plished the perusal he called for my reply. 

I asked, perhaps from impertinent curiosity, if he 
had made any overtures to his own government ? 

He said he had. 

I asked, with what success ? 

He said they had treated him with indignity, and 
from the explanatory gestures he made use of to con 
firm this statement, I have no doubt they did. 



92 SEVEN STORIES. 

He said that genius must look for lucrative patronage 
beyond the ocean, and glanced wistfully at the " arms." 
I told him turning my own regard in the same di 
rection that the United States Government was cer 
tainly a very rich and powerful one. But, I added 
it was not in the habit of paying away large sums* 
of money even to native genius ; not even, I continued 
sportively, to consular genius. I told him, if he would 
draw up a plan and model of his machine, I should be 
happy to inclose it in my budget of dispatches, for the 
consideration of the distinguished gentleman at the head 
of the Navy Department. 

He asked me if I would add a strong opinion in its 
favor ? 

I told him that I had not long been connected with 
the shipping interests of my country, and was hardly 
capable of forming an opinion about the merits of the 
marine machine he was good enough to bring under my 
notice. I was compelled further to observe, that I did 
not think a very high estimate was placed by govern 
ment upon consular opinions of any sort. The poor 
man seemed satisfied looked wistfully again at the 
" arms " as if they implied very extensive protection 
bade me good morning, and withdrew. 

* This record, dating ten years back, must not be understood 
to impugn the economy of the present administration whose dis 
bursements may safely be regarded as liberal. 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 93 

The weeks wore on, and there was no American 
arrival ; nor did I hear anything of my recognition by 
the Central Government. I drew up in a careful man 
ner, two new record books in obedience to law, and 
transcribed therein my various notes to the department 
and foreign personages, in a manner that I am sure was 
utterly unprecedented in the annals of the office. I 
prepared the blank of a passport for signature in case 
one should be needed thus reducing the effective num 
ber of those instruments to six. I even drew up the 
blank of a bill against Captain Blank (to be filled up on 
arrival) for blank charges. Most of my charges, in 
deed, may be said to have been blank charges. 

On one occasion, about three weeks after full pos 
session of the " effects," there was a violent ring at the 
office bell. I hurried down with my record books and 
inkstand, which I had transferred for security to my 
sleeping quarters. It proved, however, to be a false 
alarm : it was a servant who had rung at the wrong 
door. He asked my pardon in a courteous manner, and 
went away. I replaced the record books in the office 
drawer, and retired to my apartment. 

I think it was some two or three days after this, 
when I heard of a large ship standing " off and on" at 
the mouth of the harbor. I was encouraged to think, 
by a friendly party, that she might be an American 
vessel. I even went upon the tower of the town to have 



94 SEVEN STORIES. 

a look at her with my spy-glass (a private spy-glass). 
There was no flag flying ; and she was too far off to 
make her out by the rig. She came up, however, the 
next day, and proved to be a British bark from New 
castle. 

Matters were in this condition, the office wearing 
its usual quiet air, when I was waited on one morning 
by a weazen-faced little gentleman, who spoke English 
with pertinacity, and a slight accent. He informed me 
that he had been at one period incumbent of the office 
which I now held. He asked, in a kind manner, after 
the Government ? 

I thanked him, and told him that by last advices 
they were all very well. 

He said that he was familiar with the details of the 
consular business, and would be happy to be of service 
to me. 

I thanked him in the kindest manner ; but assured 
him that the business was not yet of so pressing a char 
acter as to demand an assistant. (Indeed, with the ex 
ception of four or five letters dispatched in various 
directions, and the preparation of the blanks already 
alluded to, I had, in the course of two or three months, 
performed no important consular act whatever.) My 
visitor diverted consideration as gracefully as his Eng 
lish would allow, to the climate and the society of 
the port. He said he should be happy to be of service 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 95 

to me in a social way ; and alluded to one or two gov 
ernment balls which, on different occasions, he had the 
honor of attending in a consular capacity. I thanked 
him again, without, however, preferring any very special 
request. 

After musing a moment, he resumed conversation 
by asking me " if I had a coat ? " 

I did not fully understand him at first ; and replied 
at a venture, that I had several. 

" Very true," said he, " but have you the but 
tons ?" 

I saw that he alluded to the official costume, and 
told him that I had not. Whereupon he said that he 
had only worn his coat upon one or two occasions ; and 
he thought that, with a slight alteration, it would suit 
admirably my figure. 

I thanked him again ; but taking from the drawer 
the thin copy of consular instructions, I read to him 
those portions which regarded the new order respecting 
plain clothes. I told him, in short, that the blue and 
the gilt (for I had not then heard of the re-introduction 
of the dress system in various European capitals) had 
utterly gone by. He seemed disappointed ; but present 
ly recovered animation, and remarked that he had in 
his possession a large American flag, which he had 
purchased while holding the consular office, and which 
(as the Government had declined paying for the same), 



96 JSfiVJEtf STORIES. 

he would be happy to sell to me at a great reduction on 
the original cost. 

I told him that the affairs of the consulate were still 
in an unsettled state ; but in the event of business turn 
ing out well, I thought that the Government might be 
induced to enter into negotiations for the purchase. 
(I had my private doubts of this, however.) 

At my mention of the Government again, he seemed 
disheartened. He soon asked me, in his broken man 
ner (I think he was of Dutch origin), " If the Gouver- 
man vass not a ittle mean about tose tings ? " 

I coughed at this ; very much as the stationer, Mr. 
Snagsby, used to cough when he made an observation 
in Mrs. Snagsby s presence. But, collecting myself, I 
said that the Government had shown great liberality in 
the sign-board, and doubted if a larger one was to be 
found in Europe. He surprised me, however, by in 
forming me in a prompt manner, that he had expended 
a pound sterling upon it, out of his own pocket ! 

I hoped, mildly, that he had been reimbursed. He 
replied, smartly, that he had not been. He continued 
courteous, however ; and would, I think, upon proper 
representations on the part of the Government, be will 
ing to resume negotiations. 

A fortnight more succeeded, during which several 
bills came in for the record books, postage, hire of 
an office-boat, rent of office, beside some repairs I had 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 97 

ordered to the office table. I had even gone so far as 
to buy a few bottles of old wine, and a package of 
Havana cigars, for the entertainment of any friendly 
captains who might arrive. Affairs were in this con 
dition when I heard, one morning, upon the public 
square of the town, that an American vessel had been 
seen some miles down the gulf, and it was thought 
that she might bear up for this harbor. I went home 
to my rooms in a state of excitement it is quite impos 
sible to describe. I dusted the record books, and rub 
bed up the backs of the United States Statutes at Large. 
(I should have mentioned that I had added my private 
copy of Yattel to the consular library ; together, they 
really made an imposing appearance.) 

I took the precaution of oiling the pulley to the office 
bell. My servant-man had hinted that it had some 
times failed to ring. I ordered him to give it repeated 
trials, while I took up a position in my apartment. It 
rang distinctly, and so vigorously that I feared the occu 
pants of the adjoining house might be disturbed. I 
therefore approached the window, and giving a concert 
ed signal, ordered my serving-man to abstain. 

He was evidently in high spirits at the good order 
in which matters stood. He renewed his proposal to 
place the sign-board upon the roof of the house. I 
found, however, upon inquiry, that it would involve the 
labor of three men for half a day ; I therefore abandoned 
5 



98 SEVEN STORIES. 

the idea. I authorized him, however, to apply a fresh 
coating of varnish, and to place it in a conspicuous po 
sition upon the side of the office fronting the door. 

He wiped his forehead, and said it was a " disegnetto 
meraviglioso " a wonderful little design ! 

The wind continued for some days northerly, and no 
vessel came into port. On the fourth day, however, I 
received a note from a friendly party, stating that an 
American bark had arrived. I gave a dollar to the 
messenger who brought the news. I saw the intelli 
gence confirmed in the evening journal. I was in 
great trepidation all the following day. At length, a 
little after the town clock had struck twelve, the cap 
tain came. I hurried into the office to meet him. He 
was a tall, blear-eyed man, in a damaged black beaver 
with a narrow rim, tight-sleeved black dress-coat, and 
cowhide boots. 

I greeted him warmly, and asked him how he was ? 

He thanked me, and said he was " pretty smart." 
I regretted that I had not some rum-and-water. The 
old wine I did not think he would appreciate. In short, 
I was disappointed in my countryman. I should not 
like to have sailed with him, much less to have served 
under him. Before leaving the office, he cautioned me 
against a sailor who might possibly come to me with his 
"cussed" complaints : he said he was an " ugly devil," 
and I had best have nothing to do with him. 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 99 

True enough, the next morning a poor fellow pre 
sented himself, speaking very broken English, and com 
plaining that he was sadly abused showing, indeed, a 
black eye, and a lip frightfully bloated. I ordered my 
serving-man to prepare him a little breakfast. This 
was not, perhaps, a legitimate consular attention, but it 
proved a grateful one ; and the man consumed two or 
three slices of broiled ham with extraordinary relish. 
After this he told me a long story of the abuses he had 
undergone, and of his desire to get a discharge. I 
asked him if he had an American protection ? He 
said he had bought one upon the dock in New York, 
shortly before sailing, and had paid a half eagle for it, 
but it was lost. 

This was unfortunate ; and upon referring to the 
ship s crew list, I found that the customs clerk had dis 
patched the whole subject of nationalities in a very sum 
mary manner. He had written the words " U. States" 
up and down the sheet in such an affluent style as to 
cover two-thirds, or three-quarters or, (reckoning the 
flourishes of his capitals) even the whole body of the 
crew. Now as some four or five of them were notori 
ously, and avowedly, as foreign as foreign birth, lan 
guage and residence could make them, I was compelled 
to think lightly of the authority of the customs clerk.. 

The Consular Instructions, moreover, I found were 
not very definite in regard to the circumstances under 



100 SEVEN STORIES. 

which a discharge might be granted. But the most try 
ing difficulty of all was the fact that I was not as yet 
in the eyes of the authorities a Consul at all. Al 
though I might discharge the poor fellow, I could neither 
procure him admittance to the hospital, or furnish him 
with such papers as would be counted valid. I could, 
indeed, protect him under the shadow of the arms and 
the flag ; but should he tire of the broiled ham, and 
venture an escapade, he might, for aught that I knew, 
be clapped into prison as a vagabond. 

I stated the matter to him cautiously ; alluding, 
with some embarrassment, to my own present lack of 
authority ; advising him of the comparative infrequency 
of American vessels at that port ; and counselling him, 
in sober earnest, to stick by the ship, if possible, until 
he reached an adjoining port, where he would find a 
recognized consul and more abundant shipping. 

The consequence was, the poor fellow slunk back to 
his ship, and the captain assured me, in a gay humor, 
(I fear it was his habit to joke in such matters with 
brother Consuls), that he " got a good lamming for his 
pains." 

When the vessel was ready to leave, I made out her 
papers. I doubt very much if any ship s papers were 
ever made out with nicer attention to formalities. I 
warmed up the stamp and printer s ink for some hours 
by a low fire, in order to secure a good impression of 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 101 

the consular seal. Without vanity, I may say that I 
succeeded. I doubt if such distinct impressions were 
ever before issued from that office. The bill was, I 
think, a model in its way ; it certainly was so for its 
amount ; for though I strained it to the full limit, of the 
Instructions, it fell at least one-third short of the usual 
bills upon the record. 

Upon the day of sailing (and I furnished my serving- 
man with an extra bottle of wine on the occasion), I 
presented myself at the office of the Port Captain, with 
the usual vouchers respecting the ship and crew under 
my charge. To my great vexation, however, that gen 
tleman politely informed me that he was not yet advised 
officially of my appointment that my seal and signa 
ture in short (so elaborately done) were of no possible 
service. 

The skipper who attended me, rubbed his hat with 
his elbow in a disturbed manner. 
"WTiat was to be done ? 

The Captain of the Port suggested that he was him 
self empowered to act as Consul for such powers as 
were unrepresented ; and he instanced, if I remember 
rightly, some of the Barbary States. 

I withdrew my papers, and my charge for services 
which had proved so unavailing. I am afraid I was 
petulant to the serving-man. Thus far the Consulate 
had not come up to expectations. I began to distrust 



102 SEVEN STORIES. 

the value of the place. I wrote off a sheet full of expos 
tulations to the Governor ; another to the authorities at 
home ; and a third to our representative at the Court. 
This last promised very strenuous exertion in my 
behalf; and he was as good as his word; for a week 
after I was gratified with a sight of my name, regularly 
gazetted under the " Official heading" of the daily jour 
nals of the place. The same evening the Governor of 
the Port addressed to me an official note, upon an im 
mense sheet of foolscap, giving the information already 
conveyed to me in the Gazette. 

Nor was this the end of my triumph ; for the next 
day, or shortly afterward, a band of street performers 
on various instruments (chiefly, however, their lungs), 
came under my windows in a body, and played several 
gratulatory airs to my success in procuring recognition. 
They even followed up the music by shouting in a most 
exhilarating manner. It showed kind-feeling ; and I 
was just observing to myself the hospitable interest of 
these people, when my serving-man entered in great 
glee, and informed me that it was usual on these occa 
sions to pay a small fee to the performers. 

I can hardly say I was surprised at this ; I asked 
how much ? He said he would count them, and thought 
about three shillings apiece (our money*) would be 

* I mean by this, of the value of our Government money ; and 
not, literally, Government money; of which, indeed, I saw very 
little very. 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 1Q3 

sufficient. As there were but fifteen, I did not think it 
high. I wondered if it had been the habit to charge 
this matter in the stationery account ? 

The day after (for now I seemed to be growing rap 
idly in importance), I received a very bulky package 
from the chief of police, inclosing the passport, unpaid 
bills, subscription papers, recommendations, and police 
descriptions of one David Humfries, who, I was inform 
ed, was in the port prison, for various misdemeanors 
chiefly for vagabondage ; and who, being an American 
citizen, was at my disposal. The chief of police ex 
pressed a wish that I would take charge of the same, 
and put him out of the country. 

I examined the papers. They were curious. He 
appeared to have figured in a variety of characters. An 
Italian subscription list represented him as the father 
of a needy family. A German one of about the same 
date, expressed a desire that charitable people would as 
sist a stranger in returning to his home and friends at 
the Cape of Good Hope. Among the bills was a rather 
long one for beer and brandy. 

I thought it would be patriotic to call upon my 
countryman. I therefore left a note " absent on busi 
ness," in the ofiice window, and called at the prison. I 
was ushered, under the charge of an official, into a din 
gy, grated room upon the second floor, and was present 
ed to a stout negro-man, who met me with great self- 



104 SEVEN STORIES. 

possession, apologized for his dress (which indeed was 
somewhat scanty) , and assured me that he was not the 
man he seemed. 

I found him indeed possessed of somewhat rare ac 
complishments, speaking German and French with very 
much the same facility as English. He informed me 
that he was a native of the Cape of Good Hope, though 
a naturalized citizen of the country I represented. His 
passport was certainly perfectly in order, and signed by 
a late Charge, Mr. Foote of Vienna. He assured me 
farther, that he was of excellent family ; and that his 
father was a respectable man, well known in New 
York, and the head of a large school in that city. I 
told him of the application of the police, and of their 
wish to be rid of him. 

He did not appear to manifest resentment ; but said 
he would consent to any reasonable arrangement. He 
had no objection to go to New York, provided his 
wardrobe were put in a proper condition. He should 
be sorry, he said, to meet the old gentleman (meaning 
the schoolmaster) in his present guise. 

I told him I was sorry that the law did not warrant 
me in finding him a wardrobe, and that only by a fic 
tion could I class him among seamen, and provide him 
with a passage home. Upon this, he avowed himself 
(in calm weather) a capital sailor, and said he had once 
served as cook. 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 105 

I accordingly wrote to the authorities, engaging to 
ship him by the first American vessel which should 
touch the port. By rare accident this happened a fort 
night after ; and having given a receipt for the black 
man, besides supplying him with a few flannel shirts at 
my own cost, I succeeded in placing him on board a 
home-bound ship, by giving the captain an order on the 
Treasury for ten dollars ; the captain intimating, mean 
time, that " he would get thirty dollars worth of work 
out of him, or take off his black skin." 

I did not envy the black man his voyage : I have 
not had the pleasure of hearing from Mr, Humfries 
since that date. 

I have spoken of the arrival of a second American 
ship ; such was the fact. I need not say that the papers 
were made out in the same style as the previous ones ; I 
had now gained considerable facility in the use of the 
seal. Upon the payment of the fees I ventured to at 
tach the seal to my receipt for the same. It was not 
necessary it was not usual even ; still I did it. If the 
occasion were to be renewed, I think I should do it 
again. 

Not long after this accession of business, which gave 
me considerable hopes of in time replacing the flag, 
I received a visit from an Italian gentleman just arrived 
from New York, where he had been an attache to an 
opera troupe. He informed me with some trepidation 
5* 



106 SEVEN STORIES. 

that the authorities were not satisfied with his papers, 
and had given him notice to return by sea. 

I asked him if he was an American : whereupon he 
showed me a court certificate of his intentions to become 
a citizen, dated a couple of days before his leave, and 
with it an imposing-looking paper, illustrated by a stu 
pendous eagle. This last, however, I found upon ex 
amination, was only the instrument of an ambitious 
Notary Public, who testified, thereby, to the genuine 
character of the court certificate, and at the same time 
invited all foreign powers to treat the man becomingly. 
The paper, indeed, had very much the air of a passport, 
and, by the Italian s account, had cost a good deal more. 

I told him I should be happy to do what I could for 
him, and would cheerfully add my testimony to the bona 
fide character of the court certificate. 

The man, however, wished a passport. 

I told him that the only form of passport of which 
I knew (and I showed the six blanks), involved a 
solemn declaration on my part, that the party named 
was an American citizen. The Italian gentleman al 
luded to M. Koszta and the New- York Herald. 

I expressed an interest in both ; but told him that I 
had as yet no knowledge of the correspondence in the 
Koszta affair ; that there had been no change in the 
consular instructions (and I showed him the little pam 
phlet). 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 107 

I promised, however, to communicate with the 
Charge, who might be in possession of later advices ; 
and, in addition, offered to intercede with the authori 
ties to grant permission to an unoffending gentleman to 
visit his friends in the country. 

Upon this I undertook a considerable series of notes 
and letters, by far the most elaborate and numerous 
which had yet issued from my consular bureau. I will 
not presume to say how many there were, or how many 
visits I paid to the lodging-quarters of the suspected 
gentleman. I found it requisite, to secure him any 
freedom of action, to become sponsor for his good con 
duct. I need not say (after this) that I felt great so 
licitude about him. 

The notice of " absent on business " became almost 
a fixture in the office window. I had written previous 
ly to the Department for instructions in the event of 
such application ; I had never received them ; indeed I 
never did. The Charge flatteringly confirmed my ac 
tion, and " relied on my discretion." I was sorry to 
find he relied so much upon it. 

It seemed to me that an office involving so large 
discretion should, at the least, have better furniture. 
The stool, though now repaired, was a small stool. I 
sat upon it nervously. The "Statutes at Large" I 
looked on with pride and satisfaction. I had inaugu 
rated them, so to speak, in the office. I placed my lit- 



108 SEVEN STORIES. 

tie Vattel by the side of them ; I hope it is there now 
though there was no eagle on the back. 

To return to the Italian gentleman, I at length suc 
ceeded in giving him a safe clearance. I think he was 
grateful : he certainly wore a grateful air when he left 
my office for the last time, and I felt rewarded for my 
labor. It was the only reward, indeed, I received : if he 
had offered a fee, I think I should have declined. Was 
I not there, indeed, for the service of my countrymen, 
and of my intended countrymen? Of course I was. 

The day after the Italian gentleman left I paid my 
office rent for the current month, besides a small bill the 
serving-man brought me for the caulking of the office 
boat. It appeared that it had grounded with the tide, 
and without our knowledge (there being no American 
ships in port), had remained exposed for several days 
to the sun. 

Keeping the office in business trim, and sitting upon 
the office stool, I received, one day, a very large packet, 
under the seal of the Department. I had not heard 
from "Washington in a long time, and it was a pleasant 
surprise to me. Possibly it might be some new and 
valuable commission ; possibly, it might bring the de 
tails of the proposed change in the Consular system. 
Who knew? 

In such an event I wondered what the probable sal 
ary would be at my post ; something handsome, no 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. 109 

doubt. I glanced at the "arms" of my country with 
pride, and (there being no American ship in port), 
broke open the packet. 

It contained two circulars, embracing a series of 
questions, ninety in number, in regard to ship-building, 
ship-timber, rigging, hemp, steamships, fuel, provision 
ing of vessels, light-house dues, expenses of harbor, 
depth of ditto, good anchorages, currents, winds, cutting 
of channels, buoys, rates of wages, apprentices, stowage 
facilities, prices current, duties, protests, officers of port, 
manufactures, trade facilities, leakages, wear and tear, 
languages, pilots, book publication, etc., etc., on all of 
which points the circulars requested full information, as 
soon as practicable, in a tabular form, with a list of 
such works as were published on kindred subjects, to 
gether with all Government orders in regard to any, or 
all of the suggested subjects, which were in pamphlet 
form ; and if in a foreign language, the same to be ac 
curately translated into American. 

The accompanying letter stated that it was proposed 
to allow no remuneration for the same ; but added, 
" faithful acquittal of the proposed task will be favora 
bly viewed." 

I reflected (I sometimes do reflect) . 

A respectable reply even to the questions suggested, 
would, supposing every facility was thrown in my way 
by port officers and others, involve the labor of at least 



1 10 SEVEN STORIES. 

six weeks, and the writing over of at least ninety large 
pages of foolscap paper (upon which it was requested 
that the report should be made). 

I reflected, farther that the port officer, as yet af 
fecting a large share of his old ignorance, would, upon 
presentation of even the first inquiries as to the depth of 
the harbor, send me to the guard-house as a suspicious 
person ; or, recognizing my capacity, would report the 
question as a diplomatic one to the Governor ; who 
would report it back to the Central Cabinet ; who would 
report it back to the maritime commander in an adjoin 
ing city ; who would communicate on the subject with 
the police of the port ; who would communicate back 
with the marine intendant ; who would report accord 
ingly to the Central Government ; who would in due 
time acquaint the Charge at the capital with their con 
clusions. 

I reflected that I had already expended, on behalf 
of the Government, more of time and of money than 
I should probably (there being no American ship in 
port) ever receive again at their hands. 

I reflected that life was, so to speak, limited ; and 
that in case I should determine to give it up to gratu 
itous work for my country, or, indeed, for any party 
whatever, I should prefer that the object of my char 
ity should be a needy object. 

I reflected that I had given bonds in the sum of 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. HI 

two thousand dollars (with sound bondsmen) for the 
stool, the blank passports, the pewter and brass seals, 
the small-sized flag, and the " arms ; " and I examined 
them with attention. 

I reflected that while these things were in a capital 
state of preservation, and my health still unimpaired, I 
had better withdraw from oflice. 

I therefore sent in my resignation. 

I do not think there has been any omission in the 
performance of my consular duties ; it involved, indeed, 
a more expensive charity on my part than I am in the 
habit of extending to the indigent. I trust that the 
Government is grateful. 

In overlooking my books I find charges against the 
Government fbr nineteen dollars and sixty-three cents 
for postages and stationery. To make the sum an even 
one I have drawn on the Government (after the form 
prescribed in the consular instructions) for twenty dol 
lars, making an over-draft of thirty-seven cents, for 
which I hope the Government will take into considera 
tion my oflice and boat rent, my time and repairs to 
the consular stool. 

Finding the draft difficult of negotiation upon the 
great European exchanges, I may add that I have car 
ried it for a long time in my pocket. Should it be even 
tually paid, I shall find myself in possession, by adding 
the thirty-seven cents to sums received in fees during 



112 SEVEN STORIES. 

the period of my consulate, of the amount of some 
thirty dollars, more or less. 

I have not -fet determined how to invest this. I am 
hoping that Mr. Powers, who I hear wears the title of 
Consul, will find some pretty Florentine model-woman 
to make an " America" of. If he does so, and will sell 
a small plaster cast at a reasonable price, I will buy it 
with my consular income, and install the figure (if not 
too nude) in my study, as a consular monument. 

I shall be happy to welcome my successor ; I will 
give him all the aid in my power ; I will present him to 
the ten-penny reading-room, and shall be happy to in 
scribe his name in advance at either of the hotels. I 
will inform him of the usual anchorage ground of 
American ships, so far as my observation has gone. I 
shall be pleased to point out to him, through the indul 
gence of my serving-man, the best grocer s shop in the 
port, and another where are sold wines and varnish. 

Should the office-stool require repair, I think I could 
recommend with confidence a small journeyman joiner 
in a neighboring court. 

He will have my best hopes for lucrative employ 
ment in his new position, and for happiness generally. 

For myself, consular recollections are not, I regret 
to say, pleasant. I do not write " Ex-United States 
Consul" after my name. I doubt if I ever shall. 

All my disturbed dreams at present take a consular 



ACCOUNT OF A CONSULATE. H3 

form. I waked out of a horrid night-mare only a few 
nights since, in which I fancied that I was bobbing about 
fearfully in a boat crashing against piles and door 
posts waiting vainly for an American captain. 

I have no objection to serve my country ; I have 
sometimes thought of enlisting in the dragoons. I am 
told they have comfortable rations, and two suits of 
clothes in a year. But I pray Heaven that I may never 
again be deluded into the acceptance of a small consu 
late on the Mediterranean. 



POSTSCRIPT. 

THE foregoing story of a Consulate was written in 
the year 1854. and by a singular mishap, which 
gave the seal to my marine misfortunes, the first draft 
of it went down in the ill-fated steamer Arctic. In the 
following year, however, it was re-written, and given 
to the public in the columns of Harper s Magazine. 

Since that date, I am happy to say that our Foreign 
Consulates have been placed upon a more dignified 
footing. Every man who represents the government 
abroad is insured at least so much of stipend, as to ena 
ble him to caulk his own boat, and to wear his own coat. 
It is to be hoped that under the new dispensation, the 
consular business, at the port alluded to, is progress 
ing swimmingly. Indeed, the natural features of the 



114 SE YEN STORIES. 

port which, without impropriety, I may name as 
Venice strongly encourage this belief. 

With unimportant exceptions, I have never held 
official position since that day. I have indeed served 
as one of five vestry-men in a small church of ten male 
members ; but it being thought desirable to rotate, so 
as to give a kind of official dignity to all the congrega 
tion, I count at the present writing, simply as pew- 
holder. I was also (if the reader will excuse the ego 
tism) at one time a director in a thriving Horticultural 
Society : but after a series of errors in the adjustment 
of the qualities of different fruits, and a shocking dis 
play of ignorance in respect to the merits of certain new 
seeds sent out by the Patent Office, I was to use the 
amiable expression retired from the direction. The 
place is now held, I believe, by a gentleman who cour 
ageously plants and eats the Dioscorea Batata. Such 
a man deserves reward ; and if it did not come in the 
way of official honor, I hardly know in what way it 
could come. 



THIRD STOE7: 



THE PETIT SOULIER 



THIRD STORY: 



The Petit Soulier. 

I. 

MY old friend the Abbe G , who on my earliest 
visit to Paris, not only taught me French, but 
put me in the way of a great deal of familiar talk- 
practice with his pleasant bourgeois friends, lived in a 
certain dark corner of a hotel in the Rue de Seine, or 
in the Rue de la Harpe ; which of the two it was I 
really forget. At any rate, the hotel was very old, and 
the street out of which I used to step into its ill-paved 
triangular court was very narrow, and very dirty. 

At the end of the court, farthest from the entrance- 
way, was the box of the concierge, who was a brisk 
little shoe-maker, forever bethwacking his lap-stone. 
If I remember rightly, the hammer of this little cordon- 
nier made the only sound that broke the stillness with 
in ; for though the hotel was full of lodgers, I think I 
never saw two of them together ; and it is quite cer- 



118 SEVEN STORIES. 

tain, that even in mid-summer, no voices were ever to 
be heard talking across the court. 

At this distance of time, I do not think it would be 
possible for me to describe accurately all the windings 
of the corridor which led to the Abbe s door. I remem 
ber that the first part was damp and low that after it, 
came a sweaty old stairway of stone ; and once arrived 
at the top of this, I used to traverse an open-sided gal 
lery which looked down upon a quiet interior court ; 
then came a little wooden wicket, dank with long hand 
ling which when it opened tinkled a bell. Sometimes 
the Abbe would hear the bell, and open his door, down 
at the end of some farther passage ; and sometimes a 
lodger, occupying a room that looked upon the last 
mentioned court, would draw slyly a corner of his cur 
tain, and peep out to see who might be passing. Occa 
sionally I would amuse myself by giving to the little 
warning bell an unnecessary tinkle, in order that I might 
study some of the faces which should peer out from the 
lodgments upon the court; yet I saw very little to 
gratify me ; and upon the damp flagging which covered 
the area of the court, I rarely saw any one moving ; at 
most, only a decrepit old woman shuffling along with 
broom in hand; or a boy, in paper cap, from some 
neighboring shop, whistling an air he may have caught 
from the orchestra at the Odeon, and disappearing 
through a dilapidated door way the only one to be 
seen. 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 119 

It appeared to me a quarter, that with its quaint, 
old fashioned windows, piling story above story, and its 
oppressive quietude, ought to show some face or figure 
that should pique curiosity, and so relieve the dulness 
of my lessons with the good Abbe. But all the faces 
that met my eye were the most matter of fact in the 
world. 

From time to time, as we passed out through the 
open-sided corridor, I would draw the Abbe s attention 
to the silent court, and ask who lived in the little 
room at the top ? 

" Ah, mon cher, I do not know." 

Or, " who lives in the corner, with the narrow loop 
hole, and the striped curtain ?" 

" I can not tell you, mon cher." 

"And whose is the little window with so many 
broken panes, and an old placard pinned against the 
sash?" 

" Ah, who knows ? perhaps a rag-picker, or a shop 
man or perhaps" and the Abbe lifted his finger, 

shaking his head expressively " It is a strange world 
we live in, mon ami." 

What could the Abbe mean ? I looked up at the 
window again : it was small, and the glass was set in 
rough metal casing : it must have been upon the fourth 
or the fifth floor ; but there was nothing to be seen 
within, save the dirty yellow placard. 



120 SEVEN STORIES. 

" Is it in the same hotel with you ?" said I. 

" Ma foi, I do not know." 

The Abbe had unconsciously given a little foot-hold, 
by aid of which my imagination might climb into a 
good romance. The chamber must be small ; indeed, 
there were few, even upon the first floor, in that neigh 
borhood, which were large. Comfortless, too, no doubt ; 
the yellow placard told me how that must be. 

I cannot undertake to describe all that fancy painted 
to me, in connection with that window of the dreary, 
silent hotel. Did some miserly old scoundrel live in the 
chamber, who counted his hoardings night after night ? 
"Was it some apprentice boy from the provinces who had 
pinned up the yellow placard more to shut out the in 
truding air, than the light ? I even lingered very late 
at the Abbc?s rooms, to see if I could detect by the glow 
of any lamp within the chamber, the figure of its occu 
pant. But either the light was too feeble or the occu 
pants were too quiet. Week after week, as I threaded 
every day the corridor, I looked out at the brooding, 
gloomy windows, and upon the mouldy pavement of the 
court, hoping for a change of aspect, that would stimu 
late curiosity, or give some hint of the character of the 
lodgers. But no such change appeared : day after day, 
there remained the same provoking quietude ; nor could 
I with all my art seduce the good-natured Abbe into 
any appetizing conjectures in regard to the character of 
his neighbors. 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 121 

My observation at last grew very careless, and I 
suspect would have been abandoned altogether, if I had 
not one day in my casual glances about the dim court, 
noticed a fragment of lace hanging within the little 
window where we had seen the yellow placard. Rich 
lace it was too. My occasional study of the shop win 
dows enabled me to give competent judgment on this 
score. It may have been a bridal veil ; but whose ? 
I could hardly have believed that a bit of dainty femi 
nine attire should on a sudden have lent such new in 
terest to the court of this dingy old lodging house of 
Paris. And yet it was as if a little wood-bird straying 
in, had filled the whole court with a blithe song. 

There are some of us who never get over listening 
to those songs. 

I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the good 
Abbe, so told him what I had seen. 

" And you think there is a bride quartered there, 
mon ami?" And he shook his head: "It is more 
likely a broidery girl who is drudging at a bit of 
finery for some magasin de litxe, which will pay the 
poor girl only half the value of her work." 

I could not gainsay this : " And have you seen 
her? "said I. 

" Mon ami, (very seriously) I do not know if there 
is any such ; and tenez mon enfant gardez vous lien 
d en savoir plus que moi I" 



122 SEVEN STORIES. 

A few weeks later it was on a winter s morning, 
after a light snow had fallen I chanced to glance over 
into the court, upon which the window that had so 
piqued my curiosity looked down, and saw there the 
print of a lady s slipper. It was scarce larger than my 
hand too delicately formed to have been left by a 
child s foot least of all by the foot of such children as 
I saw from time to time in the neighboring hotels. I 
could not but associate it with the lace veil I had seen 
above. I felt sure that no broidery girl could leave 
such delicate foot-print on the snow. Even the shop 
girls of the Rue de la Paix, or the tidiest Lorettes, 
would be crazed with envy, at sight of so dainty a 
slipper. 

Through all the morning lesson I was then read 
ing La Grammaire des Grammaires I could think of 
nothing but the pretty foot-track in the snow. 

After lesson, the Abbe took his usual stroll with 
me ; and as we traversed the corridor, I threw my eye 
over carelessly as if it had been my first observation 
saying, " My dear Abbe, the snow tells tales this 
morning." 

The Abbe looked curiously down, ran his eye rap 
idly over the adjoining windows, shook his head expres 
sively, and said, as he glanced down again, " C etait un 
fort joli petit soulier, mon ami." 

" Whose was it ?" said I. 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 123 

" Ah, 77io?i enfant, I do not know." 

" Can any broidery girl boast such a foot ?" 

" Mon enfant" (with a despairing manner) " how 
could I know ? " 

Such little, unimportant circumstances as I have 
noted, would never have occasioned remark in a court 
of the Rue de Rivoli : but in this mouldy quarter, 
which by common consent was given over to lodging- 
house keepers, grisettes, shop-men, sub-officials, medical 
students, and occasional priests, any evidences of femi 
nine delicacy or refinement and as such I could not 
forbear counting both foot-print, and veil were harshly 
out of place. Great misfortune, or great crime could 
alone drift them into so dreary a corner of the old city. 

I hinted as much to the Abbe. 

" Possibly," said he ; " ah, mon enfant if the world 
were only better ! Great misfortunes and great crime 
are all around us." 

I seized a sly occasion to consult the concierge; 
were there any female lodgers in the house ? The 
little shoe-maker with his hammer suspended, and a 
merry twinkle in his eye says, " Om, monsieur the 
aunt of the tobacconist at the corner belle femme ! " 

"No others ?" 

" Personnel 

And do the little windows looking upon the inner 
court belong to the hotel? he doubts it; if monsieur 



124 SEVEN STORIES. 

wishes, he will go see : and he lays down his hammer, 
and comes upon the corridor " no ; he knows nothing 
of them ; the entrance must be two, perhaps three 
doors below." 

From morning to morning, before my lessons be 
gin, I loiter about the entrance to the adjoining courts ; 
but I saw nothing to quicken my curiosity or to throw 
any light upon the little waifs of story which I had 
seen in the veil and the foot-prints. Stolid, common 
place people only, plodded in and out of the entrance 
gates, to which my observation was now extended ; hag 
gard old women clattering over the pavement in sabots, 
or possibly a tidily dressed shop-girl, whose figure alone 
would forbid any association with the delicate foot-print 
in the snow. I remarked indeed an elderly man in a 
faded military cloak muffled closely about him, passing 
out on one or two occasions from the third court below 
the hotel of the Abb6 : his figure and gait were certain 
ly totally unlike the habitues of the quarter ; but his 
presence there, even though connected with the little 
window of the dreary court, would only add to the 
mystery of the foot-print and of the lace. 

It happened upon a certain morning, not long after, 
as I paced through the open corridor, and threw a 
glance up at the loop-hole upon which I had chosen 
to fasten my freak of observation that I saw a slight 
change : a muslin handkerchief was stretched across 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 125 

the window, within the placard, (I could plainly see its 
embroidered border,) and while I stood regarding it, a 
delicate pair of hands (the taper fingers I saw plainly) 
removed the fastenings, and presently this other token 
of feminine presence was gone. 

I told the Abbe of my observation. 

He closed his book " La Grammaire des Gram- 
maires " (keeping his thumb at the place of our lesson) 
and gave me, I dare say, an admirable little lecture, 
which certainly was not in the grammar. I know the 
French was good ; I believe the sentiment was good ; 
but all the while of its delivery, my imagination was 
busy in conjuring into form some charming neighbor 
of whom I had only seen the delicate, frail fingers, and 
the wonderful foot-print on the snow. 

When he had finished the lecture, we accomplished 
the lesson. 

My next adventure in way of discovery was with 
the little concierge, who presided over the court where I 
had seen the tall gentleman of the military cloak, pass 
in. He was quietly dipping his roll in a bowl of coffee, 
when I commenced my inquiries. 

" Were there any rooms in the hotel to be let ? " 
JXot that I desired a change from my comfortable quar 
ters over the river ; but it seemed to me the happiest 
method of conciliating a communicative temper. 

" Oui, monsieur" responds the brisk concierge, as 



126 SEVEN STORIES. 

he gives his roll a drip upon the edge of his coffee 
bowl, and with a cheering, heavy bite takes down a 
key here, and a key there, until he is provided for all 
the rooms at his disposition. We mount together damp 
stone stair-ways and enter upon apartments with glazed 
tile floors ; we mount higher to waxed, oaken parque- 
terie ; but I like the full glow of the sun ; we must go 
higher. Upon the fourth floor, there is a vacant room ; 
its solitary window has a striped red curtain, and it 
looks out as I suspected upon the court of the open 
corridor, where I had so long carried on my furtive ob 
servations. The window which had particularly ar 
rested my attention, must be just above. 

" Was there no room still higher ?" 

" Parbleu, il y en a une ; monsieur ne se fdche pas 
de monter, done?" 

No, I love the air and the sunshine. But the little 
room into which he shows me looks into a strange 
court I do not know ; I bustle out, and toward the op 
posite door. 

" Pardon^ monsieur ; it is occupied." 

And even as he speaks, the door opens ; an old 
white haired gentleman, the very one I have seen in the 
military cloak looks out, disturbed ; and (I think it is 
not a fancy) there is the whisk of a silk dress moving 
within. 

The concierge makes his apologies, and we go below. 



THE PETIT SOU LIE R. 127 

" Will the chamber occupied by the old gentleman 
be vacant soon ? " 

" It is possible," but he cannot truly say. 

Farther down the stairs we encounter the wife of 
the concierge, at her work. He appeals to her : " Does 
Monsieur Verier leave soon ? " 

She cannot say. The marriage is off; and he may 
stay. 

It gives me a hint for further inquiry. 

" Est-ce que ce vieux va se marier, done ? " 

"Pardon, monsieur; but he has a daughter. Ah, 
qu elle est gentille ! (and the concierge looks upward 
reverently.) There was a marriage arranged, and the 
old gentleman was to live with" the daughter. But as 
my wife says it s off now : the old man has his 
humors." 

So at last the bridal veil was explained. 

" But does the daughter lodge here with the father ? " 
said I. 

"Ah, no, monsieur ; impossible : a chamber at fifty 
francs too ! It s very droll ; and the daughter drives 
in a grand coach to the door ; but it s not often ; and 
my wife who showed her the chamber tells me that 
their first meeting and it was after the old gentleman 
had been here a month or more was as if they had 
not met in years. She comes mostly of an evening or 
early morning, when few are stirring, as if she were 



128 8E YEN STORIES. 

afraid to be seen, and she is veiled and muffled in a 
shawl too cependant elle est gentille. Tenez" said he, 
pointing to a charming little lithographic head of St. 
Agnes, in his conciergerie (which we had now reached) 
" void sa tete ! " 

" And has she no attendant upon her visits? " 

" Ma foi, I cannot tell you : once or twice a gentle 
man has descended from the carriage into the court, as 
if to watch for her but who it may have been I know 
no more than you. To tell you the truth, monsieur, I 
have my doubts of the old gentleman s story about the 
coming marriage : he has a feeble head, and talks 
wildly of his daughter. I can make nothing of it. I 
can make nothing of her either, except that she has 
the face of an angel." 

" Not a fallen one, I hope." And I said it more for 
the sake of giving a turn to a French phrase, than with 
any seriousness. (In this light way we banter with 
character ! ) 

" ParUeu I " says the concierge indignantly, " on 
ne pent pas s y tromper : she is as pure as the snow." 

I had now a full budget of information to lay before 
the Abbe, and trusted to his good nature to give me 
some interpretation of this bit of history which was 
evolving under his very wing. Yet the Abbe was lost ; 
as much lost as I. But I was glad to perceive that I 
had succeeded in kindling in him a little interest in re- 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 129 

gard to his neighbor ; and the next morning, as we 
strolled through the corridor, I think he looked up at 
the window, where the yellow placard was hanging, 
with as much curiosity as ever I had done. 

A few days after, I was compelled to leave sudden 
ly for the South ; but I counselled the good Abbe to be 
constant at my old watch, and to have a story to tell 
me on my return. 



n. 



months passed before I came to Paris again ; 
_A_ and it w r as not until three days after my return, 
that I found my way to the familiar old corridor that 
led to the Abbe s room, and caught myself scanning once 
more the aspect of the dingy court. The yellow placard 
was gone ; the little window was, if possible, still more 
dilapidated, and an adventurous spider had hung his 
filmy web across all the broken panes. The Abbe was 
in his soutane, and had just returned from attendance 
upon the funeral service at the grave of a friend. A 
few stout gentlemen from the provinces were present 
in the Abbe s rooms, who were near relatives of the 
dead man ; and though the good old priest s look was all 
it should have been, I cannot say as much for the buxom 
family mourners ; grief never appears to me to mate well 



130 SEVEN STORIES. 

with too much stoutness : its sharp edge cannot reveal 
itself, with any cutting appeal, in a rubicund visage, 
and a rotund figure. I fear that I do a great many 
heavy people injustice ; for there are brave, good hearts 
hid under great weight of flesh ; yet I think the reflec 
tion finds justification in a certain poetic law of propri 
eties, and a fat undertaker or a fat hearse-man would 
be a very odious thing. 

When I left the Abbe s rooms, I walked down the 
street, thinking I would call upon my old friend the 
concierge of the third door below, and inquire after 
Monsieur Verier : but I had no sooner reached the open 
court, than I turned at once upon my heel, and strolled 
away. 

I was fairly afraid to inquire ; I would toy with my 
little romance a while longer ; perhaps, on the very 
afternoon I might meet the old gentleman rejuvenated, 
or sharing the carriage of the charming St. Agnes upon 
the Boulevards. At farthest, I knew that to-mor 
row the Abbe would have something to tell me of his 
life. 

And this proved true. We dined together next 
day at Vefour s in the Palais Royal a quiet dinner, in 
a little cabinet above stairs. 

The soup was gone, and an appetizing dish of eper- 
lans was before us the Abbe in his old fashioned way 
had murmured "votre sante" over a delectable glass 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 131 

of Chamber-tin, before I ventured to ask one word 
about Monsieur Verier. 

Ah, mon cher" said the Abbe, at the same time 
laying down his fork " he is dead ! " 

" And mademoiselle f " 

" Attendee" said the Abbe, " and you shall hear it 
all." 

I refilled the glasses ; and as we went on leisurely 
with the dinner, he leisurely went on with his narra 
tive. 

" You will remember, mon ami, having described 
to me the person of the tall gentleman who was my 
neighbor. The description was a good one, for I rec 
ognized him the moment I saw him. 

" It was a week or more after you had left for the 
South, and I had half forgotten excuse me, mon en 
fant, the curiosity you had felt about the little foot 
print in the court, when I happened to be a half hour 
later than usual in returning from morning mass, and 
as I passed the hotel of which you had spoken, I saw 
coming out, a gentleman wrapped in a military cloak, 
and with an air so unlike that of most lodgers of the 
quarter, that I knew him in a moment for your friend 
Monsieur Verier." 

"The very same," said I. 

" Indeed," continued the Abbe, " I was so struck 
with his appearance added to your interest in him 



132 SE PEN STORIES. 

(here the Abbe bowed and sipped his wine) that I de 
termined to follow him a short way down the street. 
We kept through the Rue de Seine, and passing under 
the colonnade of the Institute, crossed the Pont de Fer, 
continued along the Quay, as far as the gates of the 
garden, crossed the garden into the Rue de Rivoli, and 
though I thought he would have stopped at some of the 
cafs in the neighborhood, he did not, but kept steadily 
on, nor did I give up pursuit, until he had taken his 
place in one of the omnibuses which pass the head of 
the Rue de la Paix. 

" A week after, happening to see him again, as I 
came from Martin s under the Odeon, I followed him a 
second time. At the head of the Rue de la Paix I 
took a place in the same omnibus. He left the stage 
opposite the Rue de Lancry. I stopped a short dis 
tance above, and stepping back, soon came up with the 
poor gentleman picking his feeble way along the dirty 
trottoir. 

" You remember, my friend, wandering with me 
in the Rue de Lancry ; you remember that it is crook 
ed and long. The poor gentleman found it so ; and 
before he had reached the end, I saw that he was 
taking breath, and such rest as he might, upon the 
ledge of a baker s window. Oddly enough, too, 
whether from over fatigue or carelessness, the old gen 
tleman had the misfortune to break one of the baker s 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 133 

windows. I could see him from a distance, nervously 
rummaging his pockets, and it seemed vainly ; for 
when I had come up, the tradesman was insisting that 
the card which the old gentleman offered with a courtly 
air, was a poor equivalent for his broken glass." 

" And you paid it," said I, knowing the Abbe s 
generous way. 

" Une bagatelle ; a matter of a franc or two ; but 
it touched the old gentleman, and he gave me his ad 
dress, at the same time asking mine." 

" Bravo !" said I, and filled the Abbe s glass. 

" I remarked that we were comparatively near neigh 
bors, and offered him my assistance. I should observe 
that I was wearing my soutane upon that day : and 
this, I think, as much as my loan of the franc, made 
him accept the offer. He was going, he said, to the 
Hopital St. Louis, to visit a sick friend : I told him I 
was going the same way ; and we walked together to 
the gates. The poor gentleman seemed unwilling or 
unable to talk very freely ; and pulling a slip of paper 
from his pocket to show the concierge, he passed in. I 
attended him as far as the middle hall in the court, when 
he kindly thanked me again, and turned into one of the 
male wards. 

" I took occasion presently to look in, and saw my 
companion half way down the ward, at the bedside of a 
feeble-looking patient of perhaps seven or eight and 



134 SEVEN STORIES. 

twenty. There seemed a degree of familiarity between 
them which showed long acquaintance, and I thought, 
common interest. 

" I noticed, too, that the attendants treated the old 
gentleman with marked respect ; this was owing, how 
ever, I suspect, to the stranger s manner, for not one 
of them could tell me anything of him. I left him in 
the hospital, more puzzled than ever as to who could be 
the mysterious occupants of your little chamber. 

" The next day two francs in an envelope, with the 
card of M. Verier were left at the conciergerie. As for 
the daughter if he had one I began to count her a 
myt h " 

" You saw her at last, then," said I. 

" Attendez ! One evening at dusk, I caught a 
glimpse of the old gentleman entering his court with a 
slight figure of a woman clinging to his arm." 

"And the foot ?" 

" Ah, man enfant, it was too dark to see." 

" And did you never see her again ?" 

" Attendez (the Abbe sipped his wine). For a 
month, I saw neither Monsieur nor Mademoiselle : I 
passed the court early and late : I even went as far 
as the St. Louis ; but the sick man had left. The 
whole matter had nearly dropped from my mind, when 
one night it was very late the little bell at the 
wicket rung and my concierge came in to say, that a 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 135 

sick gentleman two doors below (and he gave, in his 
card) begged a visit from the Abbe. It was Monsieur 
Verier. I put on my soutane and hurried over ; the 
wife of the concierge showed me up, I know not how 
many nights of stairs ; at the door, she said only, The 
poor man will die, I think : he will see no physician ; 
only Monsieur 1 Abbe. Then she opened upon a 
miserable chamber, scantily furnished, and the faded 
yellow placard your eye had detected served as cur 
tain." 

I filled the Abbe s glass and my own. 

" Monsieur Verier lay stretched on the couch before 
me, breathing with some difficulty, but giving me a ges 
ture of recognition and of welcome. To the woman 
who had followed me in, he beckoned to leave : but 
in an instant again stay ! He motioned to have his 
watch brought him (a richly jewelled one I observed), 
consulted it a moment : My daughter should be here 
at ten/ he said, addressing the woman who still waited. 
If she come before, keep her a moment below ; aprcs 
qu elle monte. And the woman went below . We have 
ten minutes to ourselves/ said the sick man ; you have 
a kind heart. There is no one I have to care for but 
Marie : I think she will marry one who will treat her 
kindly. I think I have arranged that. All I can give 
her is in the box yonder/ and he pointed to a travelling 
case upon the table. It is very little. Should she not 



136 SEVEN STORIES. 

marry, I hope she may become religieuse Vous en- 
tendezf 

11 i Parfaitement, monsieur. 

" Only one thing more/ said he ; have the good 
ness to give me the portfolio yonder. 

He took from it a sheet half written over, folded it 
narrowly, placed it in an envelope which was already 
addressed, and begged me to seal it. I did so. He 
placed the letter, as well as his trembling fingers would 
allow, in a second envelope, and returned it to me. 
Keep this/ said he ; if ever, and may God forbid 
it if ever you should know that my child is suffering 
from want, send this letter to its address, and she will 
have money ; Om, mon Dieu money that is all ! 

And the old gentleman said this in a fearful state 
of agitation ; there was a step on the stair, and he 
seized my arm. Monsieur PAbb6 to you only I say 
this that letter is addressed to my poor child s mother ! 
She has never known her. I pray God she never may. 
Entendez vous ? he fairly hissed this in my ear. 

" The door opened, and that little figure I had seen 
one day in the court sprang in. Mon pere ! and with 
that cry, she was on her knees beside the old gentle 
man s cot. Ah, mon ami, how his old hands toyed 
with those locks, and wandered nervously over that 
dear head ! We who are priests meet such scenes 
often, but they never grow old ; nothing is so young as 
sickness and death." 



THE PETIT SOULIEK 137 

For ten minutes past, I do not think we had touch 
ed the wine ; nor did we now. We waited for the 
dishes to be removed. A French attendant sees by 
instinct when his presence is a burden, and in a moment 
more he was gone. 

" Eh, lien f Monsieur FAbbe ! " 

11 Ah, mon ami, the concierge was right when he told 
you it was the face of St. Agnes. 

" 4 Little one, cherie, said the old gentleman feebly, 
4 this good Abbe has been kind to me, and will be kind 
to you. I think I looked kindly at the poor girl." 

" I know you did," said I. 

" I shall be gone soon/ says the old gentleman. 
And the poor girl gathered up his palsied hands into 
hers, as if those little fingers could keep him. You 
will want a Mend, said he ; and she answered only by 
a sob. 

" I have seen Remy, said the old gentleman ad 
dressing her (who seemed startled by the name, even 
in the midst of her grief) ; he has suffered like us ; he 
has been ill too very ill ; I think you may trust him 
now, Marie ; he has promised to be kind. There was a 
pause. He was taking breath. Will you trust him, 
my child ? 

" 4 Dear papa. I will do what you wish. 

" Thank you Marie, said he ; and with that he 
tried to convey one of the white hands to his lips. But 



138 SEVEN STORIES. 

it was too much for him. He motioned to have her 
bring him a packet that lay on the table. I saw that 
he would say very little more in this world. She gave it 
him. There seemed to be a few old trinkets in it, and 
he fingered them blindly, with his eyes half closed. A 
light, Marie/ said he. The poor girl looked about the 
wretched chamber for another candle : a hundred would 
not have lighted it now. I told her as much with only 
a warning finger. Then she fell upon his bosom, witli 
a great burst of sobs. God keep you ! said he. 

" Ah, mon enfant, how she lifted those great eyes 
again and looked at him, and looked at me, and scream 
ed il est mort! I can t forget." 

The garqon had served the coffee. 

" He was buried," resumed the Abbe, "just within 
the gates of the cemetery Mont Parnasse, a little to the 
right of the carriage way as you enter. At the head of 
the grave there is a small marble tablet, very plain, in 
scribed simply i Amonpere; 1845. I was at the burial, 
but there were very few to mourn." 

" And the daughter ?" said I. 

" My friend, you are impatient : I went to offer my 
services after the death ; a little chapette ardente was 
arranged in the court-entrance. I begged mademoiselle 
to command me ; but she pointed to a friend he was 
the patient I had seen in the hospital who had kindly 
relieved her of all care. I could not doubt that he was 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 139 

the person to whom the father had commended her, and 
that the poor girl s future was secure. Indeed, under all 
her grief I thought I perceived an exhilaration of spirits 
and a buoyant gratitude to the friend who tendered a 
hundred little delicate attentions which promised hope 
fully." 

"It was Remy, I suppose." 

"I do not know," said the Abbe ; "nor could any 
one at the Hotel tell me anything of him. I gave her 
my address, begging her in any trouble to find me : she 
thanked me with a pressure of the little hand, that you, 
mon enfant, would have been glad to feel." 

" And when did you see her again ? " 

" Not for months," said the Abbe ; and he sipped at 
his demi-tasse. 

" Shall I go on, mon cher f It is a sad story." 

I nodded affirmatively, and took a nut or two from 
the dish before us. 

" I called at the hotel where Monsieur Verier had 
died ; no one there could tell me where Mademoiselle 
had gone, or where she now lived. I went to the Hos 
pital, and made special inquiries after Monsieur Remy : 
no such name had been entered on the books for three 
years past. I sometimes threw a glance up at the little 
window in the court ; it was bare and desolate as you 
see it now. Once I went to the grave of the old gen 
tleman : it was after the tablet had been raised : a rose 



140 SEVEN STORIES. 

tree had been planted near by, and promised a full 
bloom. I gave up all hopes of seeing the beautiful 
Marie again." And the Abbe paused artfully, as if he 
had done. 

I urged upon him a little glass of Chartreuse. 

" Nothing." 

"You remember, mon ami, the pretty houses 
along the Rue de Paris, at Passy, with the linden trees 
in front of them, and the clean doorsteps ? " 

" Perfectly, mon cher Abbe." 

" It is not two months since I was passing by them 
one autumn afternoon, and saw at a window half opened, 
the same sad face which I had last seen in the chapelle 
ardente of the Rue de Seine. I went in, my friend: 
I made myself known as the attendant at her father s 
death : she recalled me at this mention, and shook my 
hand gratefully : ah the soft, white hand ! " 

The Abbe finished his coffee, and moved a pace 
back from the table. 

" There were luxuries about her bois de rose 
bijouterie; but she was dressed very simply in full 
black still ; it became her charmingly : her hair twisted 
back and fastened in one great coil ; an embroidered 
kerchief tied carelessly about her neck for the air was 
fresh it had in its fastening a bit of rose geranium and 
a half-opened white rose bud : amid all the luxury this 
was the only ornament she wore. 



THE PETIT 80ULIER. 141 

" I told her how I had made numerous inquiries 
for her. She smiled her thanks ; she was toying ner 
vously with a little crystal flacon upon the table beside 
her. 

" I told her how I had ventured to inquire too, for 
the friend, Monsieur Remy, of whom her father had 
spoken : at this, she put both hands to her face and 
burst into tears. 

" I begged pardon ; I feared she had not found her 
friend? 

" i Mon Dieu, said she, looking at me with a wild 
earnestness, i il est c etait mon mari ! 

" "Was it possible ! He is dead too, then? 

" Ah, no, no, Monsieur worse : mon Dieu, quel 
manage ! and again she buried her face in her hands. 

" What could I say, mon enfant f The friend had 
betrayed her. They told me as much at Passy. I am 
afraid that I showed too little delicacy, but I was anx 
ious to know if she had any apprehension of approach 
ing want. 

" She saw my drift in an instant, mon ami (the Ab 
be s voice fell). I thought she clutched the little flacon 
with a dreary smile : but she lighted from it into pas 
sion ; Monsieur VAbbej said she rising, you are 
good ! and from an open drawer she clutched a hand 
ful of napoleons. Voyez done qa, Monsieur It Abbe -je 
suis riche ! * and with a passionate gesture, she dashed 



142 SEVEN STORIES. 

them all abroad upon the floor. Then she muttered 
4 Pardonnez moi ! and sunk into her chair again so sad 
so beautiful " The Abbe stopped abruptly. 

I pretended to be busy with a nut : but it tried my 
eyes. The Abbe recovered presently ; " She talked 
with a strange smile of her father: she sometimes 
visited his grave. I saw her fingers were seeking the 
rose, which when she had found she kissed passionately, 
then crushed it, and cast it from her c Oh, God, what 
should I do now with flowers ? 

" I never saw her again. 

" She went to her father s grave but not to pick 

roses. 

" She is there now ;" said the Abbe and in a tone 
in which he might have ended a sermon, if he had been 
preaching. 

There was a long pause after this. 

At length I asked him if he knew anything of Remy. 

" You may see him any day, said the Abbe, up the 
Champs Elysees, driving a tilbury a charming equi 
page. But there is a time coming, mon ami it is com 
ing, when he will go where God judges, and not man." 

I had never seen the Abbe so solemn. 

Our dinner was ended. The Abbe and myself took 
a carriage to cross over to Mont Parnasse. Within 
the gateway, and a short distance to the right of the 
main drive, were two tablets : one was older than the 



THE PETIT SOULIER. 143 

other by four months. The later one was quite new, 
and was inscribed simply " Marie, 1846." 

Before I left Paris I went down into the old corridor 
again, of the Rue de Seine. The chamber with the lit 
tle window had undergone a change. I saw a neat 
curtain hanging within and a workman s blouse. I had 
rather have found it empty. 

I half wished I had never seen the print upon the 
snow of Le Petit Soulier. 



FOURTH STORY: 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KIXG 




FOURTH STORY: 



The Bride of the Ice-King. 

is not a prettier valley in Switzerland than 
I that of Lauterbrunnen. "Whoever has seen it 
upon a fair day of Summer, when the meadows were 
green, the streams full, and the sun shining upon the 
crystal glaciers which lie, from the beginning to the end 
of the year, at the head of the valley, can never forget 
it. I do not think it can be more than a half mile broad 
at its widest : and in many places, I am sure it is much 
less. On one side, the rocks, brown and jagged, and 
tufted with straggling shrubs, rise almost perpendicu 
larly ; and a stream of water which comes from higher 
slopes, far out of sight from below, leaps over the edge 
of the precipice. At first, it is a solid column of water ; 
then it breaks and spreads and wavers with the wind : 



148 SEVEN STORIES. 

and finally, in a rich white veil of spray, reaches the 
surface of the meadow of Lauterbrunnen, a thousand 
feet below. They call it the Dust-fall. 

The opposite side of the valley does not change so 
suddenly into mountain. There are slopes, green or 
yellow, as the season may be, with the little harvests 
which the mountain people raise ; there are cliffs with 
wide niches in them, where you may see sheep or kids 
cropping the short herbage which grows in the shadow 
of the rocks : and there is a path zig-zagging up from 
the road below, I scarce know how. It would be very 
tiresome, were it not for the views it gives you at every 
turning. Sometimes from under a thicket of trees you 
look sheer down upon the bridge you have traversed in 
the bottom of the valley so near that you could toss your 
Alpenstock into the brook. Sometimes the green of the 
meadow, and the sparkle of its stream are wholly shut 
out from sight, and you look straight across upon the 
Dust-fall, where it leaps from the cliff abreast of you, 
and catch sight of its first shiver, before it is yet broken 
into spray. As you mount still higher toward the pla 
teau of the Ober-Alp, the pretty valley you have left 
dwindles to a mountain chasm, over whose farther edge, 
the shimmering Dust-fall seems only a bit of gauze 
swaying in the wind. 

The first time I made this ascent from the valley of 
Lauterbrunnen, was many years since, on a midsum- 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 149 

mer s afternoon. The mountains were clear of clouds ; 
their white skirts and the jagged spurs of the glaciers, 
which lie between the peaks, and pour down their clum 
sy billows of ice toward the head of the valley, were 
glowing with warm sunlight : warm and golden, the 
sunlight lay upon the green slopes around me golden 
upon the farther side of the meadow below, where the 
peasants were gathering in their July crop of hay, and 
golden upon the gush and vapor of the Dust-fall. A 
mountain girl from a near cottage, in the hope of a few 
pennies, was singing a plaintive Swiss air, whose echoes 
mingled pleasantly with the tinkle of the bells the kids 
wore, upon the cliffs above, and with the faint murmur 
of the stream trailing below. And as I lay down to 
rest under the shadow of a broad-limbed walnut (how 
well I remember it !) the song, the tinkling bells, the 
murmur of the stream, the broad full flush of mid-after 
noon, the emerald meadows from which came perfume 
of new-mown hay, the Jungfrau warmed to its very 
peak by the yellow sunshine, that sent a glory of golden 
beams through every mountain cleft all these made a 
scene, an atmosphere, a presence, where it seemed to 
me, a man might dream a life out, without one thought 
of labor or of duty. 

But summers end ; and so does sunshine. Upon 
my last visit, after an interval of six years, the scene 
was totally Afferent. It was not in summer, but au- 



150 SEVEN STORIES. 

tumn. The meadows were brown. The walnut trees 
upon the slopes toward the Wengern Alp, were stripped 
of half their leaves, and through the bleached company 
of those yet lingering, there went sighing a harsh wind 
of October. The clouds hung low, and dashed fitfully 
across the heights. From hour to hour, fragments of 
the great glacier upon the shoulder of the Jungfrau, 
burst away, and fell thundering into the mountain 
abysses. There was no sunlight upon either valley, or 
ice. 

It hardly seemed the same spot of country which 
had so caught my fancy, and so bewildered me with its 
beauty, years before. And yet there was a sublimity 
hanging about the frowning peaks, and the cold gray 
sky, of which I had no sense upon the former visit. In 
that sunny summer tide, the mountains, the air, and 
even the lustrous glacier were subdued into quiet har 
mony with the valley, and the valley brook below. 
Now the gray landscape wore a sober and solemn hue, 
that lifted even the meadow into grand companionship 
with the mountain and the glaciers ; and the crash of 
falling icebergs quickened and gave force to the impres 
sions of awe which crept over me like a chill. 

I began to understand, for the first time, that strange 
and savage reverence which the peasants feel for their 
mountains. It seemed to me that darkness would only 
be needed to drive away all rational esl .mate of the 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 151 

strange sounds which reverberated, and of the sombre 
silence which brooded among the cliffs. I entertained 
with a willingness that almost frighted me, the old sto 
ries of Ice-gods ruling, and thundering through the 
mountain chasms. I strode on to the little shelter place 
which lies under, and opposite the Jungfrau, with the 
timid step of one encroaching upon the domain of some 
august and splendid monarch. I did not once seek to 
combat the imaginative humors which lent a tone and 
a consistency to this feeling. 

A terrific storm burst over the mountains, shortly 
after I had gained shelter in the little chalet of the Ober- 
Alp. The only company I found was the host, and a 
flax-haired German student. The latter abandoned his 
pipe as the storm increased in violence and listened 
with me silently, and I thought with some measure of 
awe to the crash of the avalanches, which were set 
loose by the torrents of rain. 

" The Ice-king is angry to-night," said our host. I 
could not smile at the superstition of the man ; too much 
of the same weird influence had crept over my own 
mind : there was a feeling born of the mountain pres 
ence, which forbade any smiling a feeling as if an Ice- 
King might be really there to avenge a slight. Pres 
ently there was a louder shock than usual, and the 
echoes of the roar thundered for several moments 
amono- the cliffs. The host went hurriedly to the door, 



152 SEVEN STORIES. 

which looked out toward the Jungfrau, and presently 
summoned us to see, what he called the Maid of the 
glacier. 

The bald wall of rock we could see looming darkly 
through the tempest, and the immense caps of snow, 
which lay at the top. The host directed our attention 
to a white speck half-way up the face of the precipice 
which rose slowly in a wavy line, and presently disap 
peared over the edge of the glacier. 

"You saw her?" said the host excitedly; "you 
never see her, except after some terrible avalanche." 

"What is it?" said I. 

" We call her the Bride of the Ice-King," said our 
host ; and he appealed to the German student, who, I 
found, had been frequently in the Alps, and was fami 
liar with all the legends. And when we were seated 
again around the fire, which the host had replenished 
with a fagot of crackling fire-wood, the German re 
lighted his pipe, and told us this story of the Bride of 
the Ice-King. If it should appear tame in the reading, 
it must be remembered that I listened to it first in a 
storm at midnight, upon the wild heights of the Schei- 
deck. 

Many years ago, (it was thus his story began,) 
there lived upon the edge of the valley of Lauter- 
brunnen a peasant, who had a beautiful daughter, by 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 153 

the name of Clothilde. Her hair was golden, and flow 
ed in ringlets upon a neck as white as the snows of the 
Jungfrau. Her eye was hazel and bright, but with a 
pensive air, which, if the young herdsmen of the valley 
looked on only once, they never forgot in their lives. 

The mother of Clothilde, who had died when she 
was young, came, it was said, from some land beyond 
the Alps ; none knew of her lineage ; and the people of 
the valley had learned only that the peasant, whose wife 
she became, had found her lost upon the mountains. 
The peasant was an honest man, and mourned for the 
mother of Clothilde, because she had shared his labors, 
and had lighted pleasantly the solitary path of his life. 
But Clothilde clung with a mysterious tenderness to her 
memory, and believed always that she would find her 
again where her father had found her upon the 
mountains. It was in vain they showed her the grave 
where her mother lay buried, in the village church-yard. 

" Ah, no, not there," she would say ; and her eyes 
lifted to the mountains. 

Yet no one thought Clothilde crazed ; not a maiden 
of all the village of Lauterbrunnen performed better her 
household cares than the beautiful Clothilde. Not one 
could so swiftly ply the distaff; not one could show 
such a store of white cloth, woven from the mountain 
flax. She planted flowers by the door of her father s 
cottage ; she provided all his comforts ; she joined with 
7* 



154 SEVEN STORIES. 

the rest in the village balls ; but, unlike all the maidens 
of the village, she would accept no lover. There were 
those who said that her smiles were all cold smiles, and 
that her heart was icy. But these were disappointed 
ones ; and had never known of the tears she shed when 
she thought of her mother, who was gone. 

The father, plain peasant that he was, mourned in 
his heart when he thought how Clothilde was the only 
maiden of the village who had no lover ; and he feared 
greatly, as the years flew swiftly over him, for the days 
that were to come, when Clothilde would have none to 
watch over her, and none to share her cottage home. 
But the pensive-eyed Clothilde put on gaiety when she 
found this mood creeping over her father s thought, and 
cheered him with the light songs she had learned from 
the village girls. Yet her heart was not in the light 
songs ; and she loved more to revel in the wild legends 
of the mountains. Deeper things than came near to 
the talk of the fellow-villagers, wakened the fancy of 
the pensive-eyed Clothilde. Whether it came from 
dreamy memories of the lost mother, or daily compan 
ionship with the glaciers, which she saw from her fa 
ther s door, certain it was, that her thought went farther 
and wider than the thoughts of those around her. 

Even the lessons she learned from the humble cure 
of the village, were all colored by her vagrant fancy ; 
and though she kneeled, as did the father and the good 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 155 

cure, before the image at the altar of the village church, 
she seemed to see HIM plainer in the mountains : and 
there was a sacredness in the pine-woods upon the slope 
of the hill, and in the voice of the avalanches of spring, 
which called to her mind a quicker sense of the Divine 
presence and power, than the church chalices or the 
rosary. 

Now the father of Clothilde had large flocks, for a 
village peasant. Fifty of his kids fed upon the herbage 
which grew on the mountain ledges ; and half a score 
of dun cows came every night to his chalet, from the 
pasture-grounds which were watered by the spray of 
the Dust-fall. Many of the young villagers would have 
gladly won Clothilde to some token of love ; but ever 
her quiet, pale face, as she knelt in the village church, 
awed them to silence ; and ever her gentle manner, as 
she clung to the arm of the old herdsman, her father, 
made them vow new vows to conquer the village beau 
ty. In times of danger, or in times when sickness came 
to the chalets of the valley, Clothilde passed hither and 
thither on errands of mercy ; and when storms threat 
ened those who watched the kids upon the mountain 
slopes, she carried them food and wine, and fresh store 
of blankets. 

So the years passed; and the maidens said that 
Clothilde was losing the freshness that belonged to her 
young days ; but these were jealous ones, and, like 



156 SEVEN STORIES. 

other maidens than Swiss maidens, knew not how to 
forgive her who bore away the palm of goodness and 
of beauty. And the father, growing always older, grew 
sadder at thought of the loneliness which would soon 
belong to his daughter Clothilde. " Who," said the 
old man, "will take care of the flocks, my daughter? 
who will look after the dun cows ? who will bring the 
winter s store of fir-wood from the mountains ? " 

Now, Clothilde could answer for these things ; for 
even the cure of the village would not see the pretty and 
the pious Clothilde left destitute. But it pained her 
heart to witness the care that lay upon her father s 
thought, and she was willing to bestow quiet upon his 
parting years. Therefore, on a day when she came 
back with the old herdsman from a village- wedding, she 
told him that she, too, if he wished, would become a 
bride. 

"And whom will you marry, Clothilde?" said the 
old man. 

" Whom you choose," said Clothilde ; but she added, 
" he must be good, else how can I be good? And he 
must be brave, for I love the mountains." 

So the father and the village cure consulted togeth 
er, while Clothilde sang as before at her household 
cares ; and lingered, as was her wont at evening, by 
the chapel of Our Lady of the Snow, in view of the 
glaciers which rose in the front of the valley. But the 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 157 

father and the cure could decide upon no one who was 
wholly worthy to be the bridegroom of Clothilde. The 
people of the valley were honest, and not a young vil 
lager of them all but would have made for her a watch 
ful husband, and cared well for the flocks which be 
longed to her father s fold. 

In that day, as now, village fetes were held in every 
time of spring, at which the young mountaineers con 
tended in wrestling, and in the cast of heavy boulders, 
and in other mountain sports which tried their manli 
ness, and which called down the plaudits of the village 
dames. The spring and the spring fetes were now ap 
proaching, and it was agreed between the father and 
the cure, that where all were so brave and honest, the 
victor in the village games should receive, for reward, 
the hand of Clothilde. 

The villagers were all eager for the day which was 
to decide the fortune of their valley heiress. Clothilde 
herself wore no cloud upon her brow ; but ever, with 
the same serene look, she busied her hands with her 
old house-cares, and sang the songs which cheered her 
old father s heart. The youth of the village they 
were mostly the weaker ones eyed her askance, and 
said, " She can have no heart worth the winning, who 
is won only by a stout arm." And others said, " She 
is icy cold, and can have no heart at all." 

But the good cure said, "Nay;" and many a one 



158 SEVEN STORIES. 

from sick-beds called down blessings on her. There 
were mothers, too, of the village thinking perhaps, as 
mothers will, of the fifty kids and of the half-score of 
dun cows which would make her dowry who said with 
a wise shake of the head " She who is so good a daugh 
ter will make also a good wife." 

Among those who would gladly, long ago, have 
sought Clothilde in marriage, was a young villager of 
Lauterbrunnen, whose name was Conrad Friedland. 
He was hunter as well as herdsman, and he knew the 
haunts of the chamois upon the upper heights as well 
as he knew the pasturage-ground where fed the kids 
which belonged to the father of Clothilde. He had nut- 
brown hair, and dark blue eyes ; and there was not a 
maiden in the valley, save only the pensive Clothilde, 
but watched admiringly the proud step of the hunter 
Friedland. 

Many a time her father had spoken of the daring 
deeds of Conrad, and had told to Clothilde, with an old 
man s ardor, the tale of the wild mountain-hunts which 
Conrad could reckon up and how, once upon a time, 
when a child was lost, they had lowered the young 
huntsman with ropes into the deep crevasses of the gla 
cier ; and how, in the depths of the icy cavern, he had 
bound the young child to his shoulder, and been dragged, 
bruised and half-dead, to the light again. To all this 
Clothilde had listened with a sparkle in her eye ; yet 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 159 

she felt not her heart warming toward Conrad, as the 
heart of a maiden should warm toward an accepted 
lover. 

Many and many a time Conrad had gazed on Clo- 
thilde as she kneeled in the village church. Many and 
many a time he had watched her crimson kirtle, as she 
disappeared among the walnut-trees that grew by her 
father s door. Many and many a time he had looked 
longingly upon the ten dun cows which made up her fa 
ther s flock,and upon the green pasturage-ground, where 
his kids counted by fifty. Brave enough he was to 
climb the crags, even when the ice was smooth on the 
narrow foot-way, and a slip would hurl him to destruc 
tion ; he had no fear of the crevasses which gape fright 
fully on the paths that lead over the glaciers ; he did 
not shudder at the thunders which the avalanches sent 
howling among the heights around him ; and yet Con 
rad had never dared to approach, as a lover might ap 
proach, the pensive-eyed Clothilde. 

With other maidens of the village he danced and 
sang, even as the other young herdsmen, who were his 
mates in the village games, danced and sang. Once or 
twice, indeed, he had borne a gift a hunter s gift of 
tender chamois-flesh to the old man, her father. And 
Clothilde, with her own low voice, had said, " My fa 
ther thanks you, Conrad." 

And the brave hunter, in her presence, was like a 



160 SEVEN STORIES. 

sparrow within the swoop of a falcon ! If she sang, he 
listened as though he dreamed that leaves were flut 
tering, and birds were singing over him. If she was 
silent, he gazed on her as he had gazed on cool moun 
tain-pools where the sun smote fiercely. The idle rail 
lery of the village he could not talk to her ; of love she 
would not listen ; of things higher, with his peasant s 
voice and mind, he knew not how to talk. And the 
mother of Conrad Friedland, a lone widow, living only 
in the love of her son, upon the first lift of the hills, 
chid him for his silence, and said, "He who has no 
tongue to tell of love, can have no heart to win it ! " 

Yet Conrad, for very lack of speech, felt his slum 
brous passion grow strong. The mountain springs 
which are locked longest with ice, run fiercest in sum 
mer. And Conrad rejoiced in the trial that was to 
come, where he could speak his love in his own moun 
tain way, and conquer the heart of Clothilde with his 
good right arm. 

Howbeit, there was many another herdsman of the 
valley who prepared himself joyously for a strife, where 
the winner should receive the fifty kids and the ten dun 
cows, and the hand of the beautiful Clothilde. Many a 
mother, whose eye had rested lovingly on these, one 
and all, bade their sons "Be ready ! " Clothilde alone 
seemed careless of those, who on the festal day, were 
to become her champions ; and ever she passed undis- 



THE BR[DE OF THE ICE-KING. 161 

turbed through her daily round of cares, kneeling in the 
village church, singing the songs that gladdened her 
father s heart, and lingering at the sunset hour, by the 
chapel of Our Lady of the Snow, whence she saw the 
glaciers and the mountain-tops glowing with the rich, 
red light from the west. 

Upon the night before the day of the village fete, it 
happened that she met the brave young hunter, Conrad, 
returning from the hills, with a chamois upon his shoul 
der. He saluted her, as was his wont, and would have 
followed at respectful distance ; but Clothilde beckoned 
his approach. 

" Conrad," said she, " you will contend with the 
others at the fete to-morrow ? " 

" I will be there," said Conrad ; " and please the 
blessed Virgin I will win such prize as was never won 
before." 

" Conrad Friedland, I know that you are brave, and 
that you are strong. Will you not be generous also ? 
Swear to me that if you are the winner in to-morrow s 
sports, you will not claim the reward which my father 
has promised to the bravest, for a year and a day." 

" You ask what is hard," said Conrad. " When 
the chamois is near, I draw my bow ; and when my ar 
row is on the string, how can I stay the shaft ? " 

" It is well for your mountain prizes, Conrad ; but 
bethink you the heart of a virgin is to be won like a 
gazelle of the mountains?" 



162 SEVEN STORIES. 

" Clothilde will deny me, then ! " said Conrad re 
proachfully. 

" Until a year and a day are passed, I must deny," 
said the maiden. " But when the snows of another 
spring are melted, and the fete has returned again, if 
you, Conrad Friedland, are of the same heart and will, 
I promise to be yours." 

And Conrad touched his lips to the hand she lent 
him, and swore, " by Our Lady of the Snow," that, for 
a year and a day, he would make no claim to the hand 
of Clothilde, though he were twice the winner. 

The morning was beautiful which ushered in the 
day of the fetes. The maidens of the village were ar 
rayed in their gayest dresses, and the young herdsmen 
of the valley had put on their choicest finery. The 
sports were held upon a soft bit of meadow-land at the 
foot of the great glacier which rises in the front of 
Lauterbrunnen. A barrier of earth and rocks, clothed 
with fir-trees, separated the green meadow from the 
crystal mountain which gleamed above. All the people 
of the village were assembled ; and many a young 
hunter or herdsman from the plains of Interlacken, or 
from the borders of the Brienzer-Zee, or from the far 
ther vale of Grindelwald. But Conrad had no fear of 
these ; already, on many a day of fete, he had measured 
forces with them, and had borne off the prizes, whether 
in wrestling or in the cast of the boulders. 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 163 

This day he had given great care to his dress ; a 
jerkin of neatly tanned chamois-leather set off his mus 
cular figure, and it was dressed upon the throat and 
upon the front with those rare furs of the mountains, 
\vhich betokened his huntsman s craft. Many a village 
maiden wished that day she held the place of Clothilde, 
and that she, too, might have such champion as the 
brown-haired Conrad. A rich cap of lace, worked by 
the village hands, was around the forehead of Clothilde ; 
and to humor the pride of the old man, her father, she 
had added the fairest flowers which grew by the cottage- 
door. But, fair as the flowers were, the face of Clo 
thilde was fairer. 

She sat between the old herdsman and the cure, 
upon one of the rustic benches which circled the plateau 
of green, where the sports were held. Tall poles of 
hemlock or of fir, dressed with garlands of Alpine lau 
rel, stood at the end of the little arena, where the valley 
champions were to contend. Among these were some 
whose strong arms and lithe figures promised a hard 
struggle to the hopeful Conrad ; and there were jealous 
ones who would have been glad to humble the preten 
sions of one so favored by the village maidens, as the 
blue-eyed hunter, Friedland. Many looks turned curi 
ously toward the bench, where sat the village belle, 
whose fortunes seemed to hang upon the fate of the day ; 
but her brow was calm ; and there, as ever, she was 



164 SEVEN STORIES. 

watchful of the comfort of the old man, her father. 
Half of the games had passed over indeed before she 
showed any anxiety in the issue of the contest. Con 
rad, though second in some of the lesser sports, had 
generally kept the first rank ; and the more vigorous 
trials to come would test his rivals more seriously, and 
would, he believed, give him a more decided triumph. 

When the wrestlers were called, there appeared a 
stout herdsman from the valley of Grin del wald, who 
was the pride of his village, and who challenged boldly 
the hunter, Conrad. He was taller and seemed far 
stronger than the champion of Lauterbrunnen ; and 
there were those the old herdsman among them who 
feared greatly that a stranger would carry off the prize. 
But the heart of the hunter was fired by the sight of 
Clothilde, now bending an eager look upon the sports. 
He accepted the challenge of the stout herdsman, and 
they grappled each other in the mountain way. The 
stranger was the stronger ; but the limbs of Conrad 
were as supple and lithe as those of a leopard. For a 
long time the struggle was doubtful. The peasants of 
Grindelwald cheered the brawny herdsman ; and the 
valley rang with the answering shouts of the men of 
Lauterbrunnen. And they who were near, say that 
Clothilde grew pale, and clutched eagerly the arm of 
the cure but resumed her old quietude when at last, 
the match ended, with the cry of " Lauterbrunnen for 
ever ! " 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 165 

After this came the cast of the boulders. One after 
another, the younger men made their trial, and the 
limit of each throw was marked by a willow wand ; 
while in the cleft of each wand fluttered a little pennant 
ribbon, bestowed by well-wishing maidens. 

Conrad, taking breath after his wrestling match, ad 
vanced composedly to his place at the head of the arena, 
where stood the fir saplings with the laurel wreaths. 
He lifted the largest of the boulders with ease, and 
giving it a vigorous cast, retired unconcerned. The 
blue strip of ribbon which presently marked its fall, was 
far in advance of the rest. Again there was a joyous 
shout. The men of Grin delw aid cried out loudly for 
their champion ; but his arm was tired, and his throw 
was scarce even with the second of the men of Lauter- 
brunnen. Again the shout rose louder than before, and 
Conrad Friedland was declared by the village umpires 
of the fete to be the victor ; and by will of the old herds 
man, to be the accepted lover of the beautiful Clothilde. 
They led him forward to the stand where sat the cure, 
between the old herdsman and the herdsman s daughter. 
Clothilde grew suddenly pale. Would Conrad keep his 
oath? 

Fear may have confused him, or fatigue may have 
forbid his utterance ; but he reached forth his hand for 
the guerdon of the day, and the token of betrothal. 

Just then an Alpine horn sounded long and clear, 



166 SEVEN STORIES. 

and the echoes lingered among the cliffs and in the spray 
of the Dust-fall. It was the call of a new challenger. 
By the laws of the fete, the games were open until 
sunset, and the new-comer could not be denied. None 
had seen him before. His frame was slight, but firmly 
knit ; his habit was of the finest white wool, closed at 
the throat with rich white furs, and caught together 
with latchets of silver. His hair and beard were of a 
light flaxen color, and his chamois boots were clamped 
and spiked with polished steel, as if he had crossed the 
glacier. It was said by those near whom he passed, 
that a cold current of air followed him, and that his 
breath was frosted on his beard, even under the mild 
sun of May. He said no word to any ; but advancing 
with a stately air to the little plateau where the fir spars 
stood crowned with their laurel garlands, he seized upon 
a fragment of rock larger than any had yet thrown, and 
cast it far beyond the mark where the blue pennant of 
Conrad still fluttered in the wind. 

There was a stifled cry of amazement ; and the won 
der grew greater still, when the stranger, in place of 
putting a willow wand to mark his throw, seized upon 
one of the fir saplings, and hurled it through the air 
with such precision and force, that it fixed itself in the 
sod within a foot of the half-embedded boulder, and 
rested quivering with its laurel wreath waving from the 
top. The victor waited for no conductor ; but march- 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 167 

ing straight to the benches where sat the bewildered 
maiden, and her wonder-stricken father, bespoke them 
thus : " Fair lady, the prize is won ; but if within a 
year and a day, Conrad Friedland can do better than 
this, I will yield him the palm : until then I go to my 
home in the mountains." 

The villagers looked on amazed ; Clothilde alone 
was calm, but silent. None had before seen the 
stranger ; none had noticed his approach, and his de 
parture was as secret as his coming. The cure mut 
tered his prayers ; the village maidens recalled by timid 
whispers his fine figure, and the rich furs that he wore. 
A.nd Conrad, recovering from his stupor, said never a 
Avord; but musingly, he paced back and forth the 
length of the throw which the white-clad stranger had 
made. The old man swore it was some spirit, and bade 
Clothilde accept Conrad at once as a protector against 
the temptations of the Evil one. But the maiden, more 
than ever wedded to her visionary life by this sudden 
apparition, dwelt upon the words of the stranger, and 
repeating them, said to her father, "Let Conrad wait a 
twelvemonth, and if he passes the throw of the unknown, 
I will be his bride." 

The sun sank beyond the heights ci the Ober-Alp, 
and the villagers whispering low, scattered to their 
homes. Clothilde fancied the stranger some spiritual 
guardian ; most of all, when she recalled the vow which 



168 SEVEN STORIES. 

Conrad had made and broken. She remarked, more 
over, as they went toward their chalet, that an eagle of 
the Alps, long after its wonted time of day, hovered 
over their path ; and only when the cottage-door was 
closed, soared away to the cliffs which lift above the 
glaciers of the Jungfrau. 

The old herdsman began now to regard his daughter 
with a strange kind of awe. He consulted long and 
anxiously with the good cure. Could it be that the 
mind so near to his heart was leagued with the spirit- 
world? He recalled the time when he had met first her 
mother wandering upon the mountains ; whence had she 
come ? And was the stranger of the festal day of some 
far kindred, who now sought his own ? It was remem 
bered how the mother had loved the daughter, with a 
love that was jealous of the father s care ; and how she 
had borne her in her arms often to the very edge of the 
glacier, and had lulled Clothilde to sleep by the murmur 
of the water which makes mysterious music in the 
heart of the ice-mountains. It was remembered how 
Clothilde had mourned her mother, seated at the open 
ing of the blue glacier caverns, and how, of all roses, 
she loved best the Alpine rose. From this she made 
votive garlands to hang upon the altar of " Our Lady of 
the Snow." Did the mother belong to the genius of the 
mountains, and was the daughter pledged to the Ice- 
King again? 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 169 

The poor old herdsman bowed his head in prayer ; 
the good cure whispered words of comfort ; Clothilde 
sang as she had sung in the days gone ; but the old man 
trembled now at her low tones which thrilled on his ear 
like the syren sounds, which they say in the Alps, go 
go always before the roar of some great avalanche. Yet 
the father s heart twined more and more around the 
strange spirit-being of Clothilde. More and more, it 
seemed to him that the mother s image was before him 
in the fair child, and the mother s soul looking at him 
from out the pensive eyes of Clothilde. He said no 
word now of the marriage, but waited with resignation 
for the twelvemonth to pass. And he looked with pity 
upon the strong-hearted Conrad, who fiercer and more 
daring than before as if a secret despair had given 
courage scaled the steepest cliffs, and brought back 
stores of chamois flesh, of which he laid always a por 
tion at the door of the father of Clothilde. 

It was said, too, that the young herdsman might be 
heard at night, casting boulders in the valley, and nerv 
ing his arm for the trial of the twelvemonth to come. 
The mother of the young herdsman spoke less often 
of the ten dun cows which fed upon the pasture grounds 
of her father, and counted less often the fifty kids 
which trooped at night into her father s folds upon the 
mountains. Yet ever Clothilde made her sunset walks 
to the chapel of " Our Lady of the Snow," and ever in 



170 SEVEN STORIES. 

her place, in the village church, she prayed as reverently 
as before, for HEAVEN to bless the years of the life of 
the old man, her father. If she lived in a spirit-world, 
it semeed a good spirit-world ; and the crystal glory of 
the glacier, where no foot could go, imaged to her 
thought the stainless purity of angels. If the cure 
talked with Clothilde of the heaven where her mother 
had gone, and where all the good will follow Clothilde 
pointed to the mountains. Did he talk of worship, and 
the anthems which men sang in the cathedrals of cities ? 
Clothilde said " Hark to the avalanche ! " Did he 
talk of a good spirit, which hovers always near the 
faithful ? Clothilde pointed upward, where an eagle was 
soaring above the glacier. 

As the year passed away, mysterious rumors were 
spread among the villagers : and there were those who 
said they had seen at eventide Clothilde talking with a 
stranger in white, who was like the challenger of the 
year before. And when winter had mantled the lower 
hills, it was said that traces of strange feet could be 
seen about the little chapel of u Our Lady of the Snow." 
Howbeit, Clothilde neglected not one of the duties which 
belonged to her in the household of her father ; and 
her willing heart and hand forbade that either the kind 
old herdsman or the cure should speak aught ill of her, 
or forbid her the mountain rambles. 

The old mother of Conrad grew frighted by the 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 171 

stories of the villagers, and prayed her son to give up 
all thought of the strange Clothilde, and to marry a 
maiden whose heart was of warmer blood, and who 
kept no league with the Evil one. But Conrad only the 
more resolutely followed the bent of his will, and 
schooled himself for the coming trial. If they talked 
to him of the stranger, he vowed with a fearful oath, 
that be he who he might he would dare him to 
sharper conflict than that of the year before. 

So, at length, the month and the day drew near 
again. It was early spring-time. The wasting snows 
still whitened the edges of the fields which hung upon 
the slopes of the mountains. The meadow of the fete 
had lost the last traces of winter, and a fresh green sod, 
besprinkled with meadow flowers, glittered under the 
dew and the sunlight. 

Clothilde again was robed with care ; and when 
the old herdsman looked on her under the wreath she 
had woven from the cottage flowers, he gave over all 
thought of her tie to the spirit-world, and clasped her to 
his heart " his own, his good Clothilde ! " 

On the day preceding the fete, there had been heavy 
rain ; and the herdsmen from the heights reported that 
the winter s snows were loosening, and would soon 
come down, after which would be broad summer and 
the ripening of the crops. Scarce a villager was away 
from the wrestling ground ; for all had heard of Clo- 



172 SE YEN STORIES. 

tliilde, and of the new and strange comer who had chal 
lenged the pride of the valley, and had disappeared 
none knew whither. Was Conrad Friedland to lose 
again his guerdon ? 

The games went on, with the old man, father of 
Clothilde, watching timidly, and the good cure holding 
his accustomed place beside him. There were young 
herdsmen who appeared this year for the first time 
among the wrestlers, and who the past twelvemonth 
had ripened into sturdy manhood. But the firm and 
the tried sinews of the hunter Conrad placed him be 
fore all these, as he was before all the others. Not so 
many, however, as on the year before envied him his 
spirit-bride. Yet none could gainsay her beauty ; for 
this day her face was radiant with a rich glow, and her 
clear complexion, relieved by the green garland she 
wore, made her seem a princess. 

As the day s sports went on, a cool, damp wind blew 
up the valley, and clouds drifted over the summits of the 
mountains. Conrad had made himself the victor in 
every trial. To make his triumph still more brilliant, 
he had surpassed the throw of his unknown rival of the 
year before. At sight of this, the villagers raised one 
loud shout of greeting, which echoed from end to end 
of the valley. And the brave huntsman, flushed with 
victory, dared boldly the stranger of the white jerkin 
and the silver latchets to appear and maintain his claims 
to the queen of the valley the beautiful Clothilde. 



THE BRIDE OF TEE ICE-KING. 173 

There was a momentary hush, broken only by the 
distant murmur of the Dust-fall. The thickening clouds 
drifted fast athwart the mountains. Clothilde grew 
suddenly pale, though the old herdsman her father was 
wild with joy. The cur&lt; watched the growing paleness 
of Clothilde, and saw her eye lift toward the head of 
the glacier. 

" Bear away my father ! " said she, in a quick tone 
of authority. In a moment the reason was apparent. 
A roar, as of thunder, filled the valley ; a vast mass of 
the glacier above had given way, and its crash upon the 
first range of cliffs now reached the ear. The fragments 
of ice and rock were moving with frightful volume 
down towards the plateau. The villagers fled scream 
ing; the father of Clothilde was borne away by the 
cure ; Clothilde herself was, for the time, lost sight of. 
The eye of Conrad was keen, and his judgment rare. 
He saw the avalanche approaching, but he did not fly 
like others. An upper plateau and a thicket of pine- 
trees were in the path of the avalanche ; he trusted to 
these to avert or to stay the ruin. As he watched, 
while others shouted him a warning, he caught sight 
of the figure of Clothilde, in the arms of a stranger fly 
ing toward the face of the mountain. He rushed wildly 
after. 

A fearful crash succeeded ; the avalanche had crossed 
the plateau, and swept down the fir-trees ; the trunks 



174 SEVEN STORIES. 

splintered before it, like summer brambles ; the detached 
rocks were hurled down in showers ; immense masses 
of ice followed quickly after, roaring over the debris of 
the forest, and with a crash that shook the whole valley, 
reached the meadow below. Swift as lightning, whole 
acres of the green sod were torn up by the wreck of the 
forest trees and rocks, and huge, gleaming masses of 
ice ; and then, more slowly, with a low murmur like a 
requiem, came the flow of lesser snowy fragments, cov 
ering the great ruin with a mantle of white. 

Poor Conrad Friedland was buried beneath ! 

The villagers had all fled in safety ; but the green 
meadow of the fetes was a meadow no longer. Those 
who were hindermost in the flight said they saw the 
stranger in white bearing Clothilde, in her white robes, 
up the face of the mountain. It is certain that she was 
never seen in the valley again ; and the poor old herds 
man, her father, died shortly after, leaving his stock of 
dun cows and his fifty kids to the village cure, to buy 
masses for the rest of his daughter s soul. 

" This," said the German, " is the story of the Bride 
of the Ice-King ; " and he relit his pipe. 

The snow had now passed over, and the stars were 
out. Before us was the giant wall of the Jungfrau, 
with a little rattle of glacier artillery occasionally break 
ing the silence of the night. To the left was the tall 



THE BRIDE OF THE ICE-KING. 175 

peak of the Wetterhorn, gleaming white in the star 
light ; and far away to the right, we could see the 
shining glaciers at the head of the Lauterbrunnen 
valley. 



FIFTH STORY: 

THE CABRIOLET 



8* 



FIFTH STORY: 



The Cabriolet. 

A HOT July day in Paris. It is hard to be borne ; 
and shall I persist in frying my daily dish 
of nettlepots under the leads of the Hotel de Louvre, 
when a day will carry me where I may take breath and 
refreshment under the waving poplars that tuft French 
wayside stiff, serried plumes that run everywhere in 
France out to the horizon, and keep up the illusion of 
army clank and marching grenadiers ? 

Will the reader join me in this escapade into the 
French country where I will not poetize, but will tell, 
simply and truly, what I see, and what I hear? 

Do you not love to amble, after all, with this sort of 
traveller, who admits you to pack with him, to eat his 



180 SEVEN STORIES. 

last meal with him, to miss the train with him, to dine 
with him, to see common things commonly ? Are not 
all the great things in the guide-books, the gift-books, 
and the poets? Can I kindle them over? Are they 
not burned to a crisp in your thought already only 
ashes left, which you spread upon your own fancies (as 
wood-ashes to home patches of clover) to make them 
grow? 

Well we (the reader and I) pack our portmanteau ; 
tis a small one ; when you are old in travel you will al 
ways carry a small one ; the more experience, the less 
the luggage ; if you need coat or linen, you shall find 
coat and linen in every capital of Europe ; they wear 
such things in all civilized countries ; they sell them, 
too. We therefore bundle together only such things as 
we positively need, and giving them into the hands of a 
facteur, we direct him to carry our luggage to the of 
fice of the Diligences, a little way out of the Rue St. 
Honore. We book our portmanteau there for the east 
ern town of Dole, lying in the way to Switzerland, and 
within sight of the best vineyard slopes of Burgundy. 

Our next step shall be to go around to the passage 
Vero-Dodat, and buy a goat-skin knapsack ; it is large 
enough for a change of linen, a guide-book, an extra 
pair of woollen socks, soap and brushes, a pocket-tele 
scope, and perhaps a miniature Tennyson for rainy 
days in the mountains. 



THE CABRIOLET. 181 

With this a slouch, broad-brimmed hat, a service 
able tweed suit, and heavy walking shoes, we caU a cab, 
drive down the Rue Rivoli and the Rue St. Antoine, 
cross the Place of the Bastile, and arrive presently at 
the station-house of the Lyons Railway. We pay a 
fare of twenty-five sous (we should have paid a dollar 
in New York) , and take a ticket for Fontainbleau. 

Why should we, with our hob-nailed shoes and 
tweed overalls take a first-class place ? Ah, the tender 
ly-proud Americans ! so vain of extravagance so jeal 
ous of anything like privilege what muttons they 
make for the innkeepers ! We have outlived this ; we 
take a second-class seat ; we pay less by a third ; we 
see more of the natives by half ; we have plenty of air ; 
we have cushioned seats (though they may be covered 
with striped bed-ticking) ; and the chances are even 
that we shall have beside us some member of the Insti 
tute of France, some eminent professional man, who 
dislikes at once the seclusion and the price of the first- 
class carriage. 

Away we hurtle ; the houses, the trees, the fortifi 
cations, the plains, the great outstanding barracks, the 
white villages, drift into the dreamy distance, where the 
domes of Paris gleam in the haze like sparkling dande 
lions on a dewy meadow. When we stop at Fontaine- 
bleau, after a two hours ride, we deliver our ticket 
within the station-house ; and as we shoulder our knap- 



182 SEVEN STORIES. 

sack, and march into the town, we hear the buzz of the 
train as it sweeps on toward Lyons. 

We stop at the inn of the Gadran Bleu ; a fat land 
lady receives us shows us to a little chamber, not so 
large, perhaps, as your attic rooms of the New York 
hotels, but only up a single flight of stairs ; the floor is 
of red tiles, which have been waxed that morning only, 
and shine, and would seem slippery, except for our 
good hob-nailed shoes. There is a dainty bed, with 
coarse, cool, clean linen, and a water-pitcher of most 
Liliputian make. 

" Has Monsieur breakfasted?" 

Of course we have breakfasted before ten o clock ; 
still we will have a bite, since the ride and the fresh 
air of the country have sharpened our appetite. 

We will have a steak aux pommes, and a half bottle 
of Beaune, and perhaps a bit of cheese and a plate of 
cherries. 

" Tres lien!" says the landlady. And when we 
have washed the dust from our eyes, and gone below, 
into the long salle-a-manger, a tidy French girl (who 
would be a grisette if she went to Paris) is laying our 
cloth upon an end of the table, and we snuff the odor 
of the steak, mingled with that of the jessamines from 
the garden. And as we eat with sharpened taste (for 
the Beaune is an appetizing wine), we rejoice in the 
pleasant escape we have made ; we compare that quiet 



THE CABRIOLET. 183 

lunch, within sound of the roar of the great French for 
est, and only a stone s-throw away from the magnificent 
home of Francis the First, with the lunches you may be 
taking in the crowd of Saratoga or Newport, amidst the 
clamor of a hundred waiters, and frankly we pity 
you. In sheerest benevolence, we wish we might single 
out a pretty face and figure from the hubbub of your 
watering places, and place them beside us here in the 
Cadran Bleu, and turn out a drop of the petillant, gen 
erous wine, to moisten the fair lips withal ; how she 
would forget the hob-nails, and we the hoops ; how we 
would luxuriate in the cool, scented air, and loiter away 
afterward in the coppices of the palace garden ! 

As we said, the great things of travel are all fami 
liar ; we leave them utterly ; we pass through the Pal 
ace-yard away from the companies of strangers who 
are passing in and out of the royal apartments and 
loiter on along the terrace, to the parapet that skirts the 
garden pond. "We sit there, idly nicking our hob-nailed 
shoes against the wall, looking over to the rich sweep 
of lawn and clumps of shrubbery that streteh away from 
the farther shore. We buy a cake from an old woman, 
and break it, and fling it to the fishes ; these come 
crowding to the bait by hundreds heavy, lumbering 
carp, who have lived in those waters these fifty years, 
perhaps a century, and may have risen to catch bread 
crumbs from the hand of some pretty Dauphiness in 



184 SEVEN STORIES. 

the days gone. Ther? aro hoary veterans among them, 
wagging their tails gravely, and blotched over with 
gray spots, who it is said, date back as far as the times 
of Francis the First. What a quiet, serene life they 
must have passed ! How much more royally than kings 
they have braved the storms and the weaknesses of age ! 
The air is delightfully cool ; the fragrance of a thousand 
flowering things is on it ; the shadow of the farther 
trees falls heavy on the water. There are worse places 
to loiter in than the gardens of Fontainbleau. 

What, now, if we wander away into the forest, com 
paring, as we go, the nibbling, ancient fishes of the 
pool, to that bait-seeking fry we have seen in other 
times and other watering-places fat, dowdy dowagers ; 
brisk young misses, in shoals ; bright-waistcoated bucks 
all disporting like the carp coming by turns to the 
surface making a little break and a few eddies catch 
ing at floating crumbs and retiring, when the season 
is over, to hibernate under some overhanging roof-tree 
which they call Home ? 

Oaks, beeches, tangled undergrowth, moss un- 
der-foot, gray boulders, long vistas of highway 
stretching to a low horizon ; artists sketching on 
camp-stools ; Mr. Smith, and wife and daughter, 
driving in a crazy phaeton (wife and daughter wearing 
green frights, and reading Mr. Murray) all these we 
see, as we loiter on through the paths of the forest. We 



THE CABRIOLET. 185 

make three leagues of tramp by sundown, and are ready 
for our dinner at the Cadran Bleu ; Mr. Smith and 
wife and daughter are just finishing theirs, at the end of 
the long table. They mistake our nationality, and re 
mark somewhat freely upon French taste in matters of 
diet. They are apparently from Huddersfield ; they do 
not once suspect that a man with a beard, whom they 
meet at the Cadran Bleu, can speak or understand 
English. So, as we eat our filet saute aux champignons, 
we learn that the oaks in Windsor Park are much finer 
than those of Fontainbleau ; that the French beer is 
watery stuff; and that the Americans are not the only 
self-satisfied people in the world. 

Mr. Smith, wife and daughter, drop away at length ; 
we wander under the shade of the palace walls ; a dra 
goon passes from time to time, with sabre clattering at 
his heels ; the clock in the great court, where Napoleon 
bade his army adieu before Elba, sounds ten as we turn 
back to the inn ; and from our window we see the stars 
all aglow, and feel the breath of the forest. 

Coffee at six with two fresh eggs. If you carry a 
knapsack, you must carry early habits with it. The 
hostess brings our little bill, smilingly ; we promised to 
tell you of commonest details, so you shall see the price 
of our entertainment : 



186 SEVEN STORIES. 

Lunch . : v . .2 francs. 

Wine . ,.;,- ,,.;.; ; ,. ; : 2 francs. 

Dinner . ; .. ...... , . 4 francs. 

Room . , ,.. ". ... 3 francs. 

Wax-light . . . .1 franc. 

Breakfast . . 2 francs. 

Service . . . .1 franc. 

Being a total of fifteen francs. It is not over dear, 
when we reckon the pleasant Burgundy we have drunk, 
and remember, too, that Fontainbleau is as near (in 
time) to Paris, as Rockaway to New York. 

How the birds sing in the woods ; and how the 
dew shines upon the nodding clover, which shows 
itself here and there by the wayside ! After two 
hours march better than two leagues we sit down 
in the edge of the forest. We have passed a woodman 
with his cart, a boy driving cattle, and a soldier with 
his coat slung over his shoulder. We shall scarce 
see any others till we are out of the wood. 

A half hour there, under the oaks, and we are 
ready for the tramp again. We are only putting our 
selves in walking trim for the passes of Switzerland, 
and so take this level country very leisurely. The little 
town of Fossard lies just upon the outskirts of the 
forest. We welcome it gladly ; for by the time it is 
reached it is full noon. There is a straggling, white, 
low cottage of stone, covered with mortar, and shaded 



THE CABRIOLET. 187 

perhaps by a pear or a plum-tree ; then another, like 
the first ; a woman in sabots (which are heavy beechen 
shoes) ; and at last a larger cottage, with a fern bough 
over the door, and a floor covered with baked tiles, 
glossed over with grease, wax, and filth. The bough 
means that we may find bread, cheese, and wine there, 
and if not over-fastidious, a bed. The bread we take, 
and a bottle of sour wine ; and sit at the deal table, 
writing there very much of what you are reading now, 
in our pocket note-book. 

So we push on our summer jaunt ; fatigue ; rest in 
villages ; strange dishes of stewed pears ; Gruyere 
cheese ; country fairs, where at eventide, we see the 
maidens dancing on the green sward ; high old towns 
with toppling towers ; walks through vineyards ; long 
levels ; woody copses, over which we see extinguisher 
turrets of country chateaux. 

But all this grows tiresome at length ; and when we 
have reached the little shabby town of St. Florentin, on 
the third day, we venture to inquire about some coach 
(for we are away from the neighborhood of railways) 
which shall take us on to Dole. But at St. Florentin 
there is no coach, not even so much as a voiture a volonte, 
to be found ; so we buckle on our knapsack, and toil along 
under the poplars to a little village far off in the plain, 
where we are smuggled into what passes for the coupe 
of a broken-down diligence. A man and little girl, who 



188 SEVEN STORIES. 

together occupy the third seat, regale themselves with a 
fricandeau stuffed with garlic. The day is cool, the 
windows down, the air close, and the perfume (when 
you travel on the by-ways of France, learn patience). 

That night we reach a town where lived that prince 
of boys story-books about animals Buffon. A tower 
rises on the hills beside the town, covered with ivy 
gray, and venerable, and sober-looking ; and the postil 
lion says it is Buffon s tower, and that the town is called 
Buffon. 

We desire to get to Dole as soon as possible ; so the 
next morning voild un cabriolet ! to catch the diligence 
that passes through the old town of Semur. This 
French cabriolet which we take at Buffon, is very much 
like a Scotch horse-cart with a top upon it. It has a 
broad leather-cushioned seat in the back, large enough 
for three persons. One is already occupied by a pretty 
woman, of some four or five and twenty. The postillion 
is squatted on a bit of timber that forms the whipple- 
tree. We bid adieu to our accommodating landlady, 
take off our hat to the landlady s daughter, and so go 
jostling out of the old French town of Buffon, which, 
ten to one, we shall never see again in our lives. 

What think you, pray, of a drive in a French cab 
riolet, with a pretty woman of five and twenty ? We 
will tell you all just as it happened. Our cigar chances 
to be unfinished. " Of course, smoking was offensive to 
mademoiselle ? " 



THE CABRIOLET. 189 

It proved otherwise ; " Oh no ! her husband was a 
great smoker." 

" Ah, ma foi ! can it be that madame, so young, is 
indeed married ! " 

" It is indeed true" and there is a glance both of 
pleasure and of sadness in the woman s eye. 

We begin to speculate upon what that gleam of 
pleasure and of sadness may mean ; and, finally, curi 
osity gains on speculation. " Perhaps madame is trav 
elling from Paris like ourselves ! " 

" No ; but she has been at Paris. TThat a charm 
ing city ! those delicious Boulevards and the shops, and 
the Champs Elysees ! " 

" And if madame is not coming from Paris, perhaps 
she is going to Paris ? " 

"Nonplus;" even now we are not right. "She 
is coming from Chalons, she is going to Semur." 

" Madame lives then, perhaps, at Semur?" 

" Pardon, she is going for a visit." 

" And her husband is left alone then?" 

" Pardon" (and there is a manifest sigh), he is not 
alone." And madame rearranges the bit of lace on each 
side of her bonnet, and turns half around, so as to show 
more fairly a very pretty brunette face, and an exceed 
ingly roguish eye. 

"We are curious to know if it is madame s first visit 
to Semur?" 



190 SEVEN STORIES. 

" Du tout I " and she sighs. 

" Madame then has friends at Semur?" 

" Ma foil je ne saurais vous dire." She does not 
know. 

This is very odd, we think. " And who can madame 
be going to visit ? " 

" Her father if he is still living." 

" But how can she doubt, if she has lived so near as 
Chalons?" 

" Pardon, I have not lived at Chalons, but at Bor 
deaux, and Montpelier, and Pau, and along the Biscayan 
mountains." 

" And is it long since she has seen her father? " 

" Very long ; ten long long years ; then they were 
so happy ! Ah ! the charming country of Semur ; the 
fine sunny vineyards, and all so gay, and her sister and 
little brother " (madame pulls a handkerchief of I attiste 
out of a little silken bag) . 

We tarn slightly to have a fuller sight of her. 

We knew "it would be a glad thing to meet them 
all!" 

" Jamais, Monsieur, never, I can not ; they are 
gone ! " and she turned her head away. 

The French country-women are simple-minded, ear 
nest, and tell a story much better and easier than any 
women in the world. We thought we said, indeed 
" she was young to have wandered so far ; she must have 



THE CABRIOLET. 191 

been very young to have quitted her father s house ten 
years gone-by." 

" Very young very foolish, Monsieur. I see," says 
she, turning, " that you want to know how it was, and 
if you will be so good as to listen, I will tell you, Mon 
sieur." 

Of course we were very happy to listen to so charm 
ing a story-teller ; and our readers as well, perhaps. 

" You know, Monsieur, the quiet of one of our little 
country towns very well ; Semur is one of them. My 
father was a small proprietaire ; the house he lived in is 
not upon the road, or I would show it to you by-and-by. 
It had a large court-yard, with an arched gateway 
and there were two hearts cut upon the top stone ; the 
initials of my grandfather and grandmother on either 
side ; and all were pierced by a little dart. I dare say 
you have seen many such as you have wandered through 
the country ; but now-a-days they do not make them. 

"Well, my mother died when I was a little girl, 
and my father was left with three children my sister, 
little Jacques, and I. Many and many a time we used 
to romp about the court-yard, and sometimes go into 
the fields at vineyard dressing, and pluck off the long 
tendrils ; and I would tie them round the head of little 
Jacques ; and my sister, who was a year older than I, 
and whose name was Lucie, would tie them around my 
head. It looked very pretty, to be sure, Monsieur ; and 



192 SEVEN STORIES. 

I was so proud of little Jacques, and of myself too ; I 
wish they would come back, Monsieur those times ! 
Do you know I think sometimes that, in Heaven, they 
will come back? 

" I do not know which was prettiest Lucie or I ; 
she was taller and had lighter hair ; and mine, you see, 
is dark. (Two rows of curls hung each side of her 
face, jet black.) I know I was never envious of her." 

" There was little need." 

"You think not, Monsieur; you shall see, pres 
ently. 

" I have told you that my father was a small propri- 
etaire ; there was another in the town whose lands were 
greater than ours, and who boasted of having been 
some time connected with noble blood, and who quite 
looked down upon our family. But there is little of 
that feeling left now in the French country and I thank 
God for it, Monsieur. And Jean Frere, who was a son 
of this proud gentleman, had none of it when we were 
young. 

" There was no one in the village he went to see 
oftener than he did Lucie and me. And we talked like 
girls then, about who should marry Jean, and never 
thought of what might really happen ; and our bonne 
used to say, when we spoke of Jean, that there were 
others as good as Jean in the land, and capital hus 
bands in plenty. And then we would laugh, and some- 



THE CABRIOLET. 193 

times tie the hand of Jacques to the hand of some pretty 
girl, and so marry them, and never mind Jacques pet 
tish struggles, and the pouts of the little bride ; and 
Jean himself would laugh as loud as any at this play. 

" Sometimes Jean s father would come when we were 
romping together, and take Jean away ; and sometimes 
kiss little Jacques, and say he was a young rogue, but 
have never a word for us. 

u So matters went on till Lucie was eighteen, and 
Jacques a fine tall lad. Jean was not so rich as he had 
been, for his father s vineyard had grown poor. Still 
he came to see us, and all the village said there would 
be a marriage some day ; and some said it would be 
Lucie, and some said it would be I. 

" And now it was I began to watch Lucie when 
Jean came ; and to count the times he danced with Lu 
cie, and then to count the times that he danced with me. 
But I did not dare to joke with Lucie about Jean, and 
when we were together alone, we scarce ever talked of 
Jean." 

" You were not in love with him, of course ? " 

"I did not say so," said madame. "But he was 
handsomer than any of the young men we saw ; and I 
so young never mind ! 

" You do not know how jealous I became. We had 
a room together, Lucie and I, and often in the night I 
would steal to her bed and listen, to find if she ever 
13 



194 SE VEN STORIES. 

whispered anything in her dreams ; and sometimes when 
I came in at evening, I would find her weeping. I re 
member I went to her once, and put my arm softly 
around her neck, and asked her what it was that trou 
bled her ; and she only sobbed. I asked her if I had 
offended her ; You ! said she, ma sceur, ma mignon- 
ne I and she laid her head upon my shoulder, and cried 
more than ever ; and I cried too. 

" So matters went on, and we saw, though we did 
not speak to each other of it, that Jean came to see us 
more and more rarely, and looked sad when he parted 
with us, and did not play so often with little Jacques. 

" At length how it was we women never knew 
it was said that poor Jean s father, the proud gentle 
man, had lost all his money, and that he was going 
away to Paris. We felt very badly ; and we asked 
Jean, the next time he came to see us, if it was all true ? 
He said that it was true, and that the next year they 
were going away, and that he should never see us again. 
Poor Jean ! how he squeezed my hand as he said this ; 
but in his other hand he held Lueie s. Lucie was more 
sensitive than I, and when I looked at her, I could see 
that the tears were coming in her eyes. 

" You will be sorry when I am gone ? said Jean. 

" You know we shall, said I ; and I felt the tears 
coming too. 

" A half year had gone, and the time was approach- 



THE CABRIOLET. 195 

ing when Jean was to leave us. He had come at inter 
vals to pass his evenings with us ; he was always a lit 
tle moody, as if some trouble was preying on his 
mind ; and was always very kind to Lucie, and kinder 
still, I thought, to me. 

" At length, one day, his father, a stately old gentle 
man, came down and asked to see my father ; and he 
staid with him half an hour, and the thing was so new 
that the whole village said there would be a marriage. 
And I wandered away alone with little Jacques, and sat 
down under an old tree I shall try hard to find the 
place and twisted a garland for little Jacques, and 
then tore it in pieces ; and twisted another and tore that 
in pieces, and then cried, so that Jacques said he be 
lieved I was crazy. But I kissed him and said, i No, 
Jacques, sister is not crazy ! 

" When I went home, I found Lucie sad, and papa 
sober and thoughtful ; but he kissed me very tenderly, 
and told me, as he often did, how dearly he loved me. 
The next day Jean did not come, nor the next, nor the 
next after. I could not bear it any longer, so I asked 
papa what Jean s father had said to him, and why Jean 
did not come ? 

" He kissed me, and said that Jean wanted to take 
his child away from him. And I asked him though I 
remember I had hardly breath to do it what he had 
told him? 



196 SEVEN STORIES. 

" I told him, said papa, that if Lucie would mar 
ry Jean, and Jean would marry Lucie, they might mar 
ry, and I would give them a father s blessing/ 

" I burst into tears, and my father took me in his 
arms ; perhaps he thought I was so sorry to lose my 
sister I don t know. When I had strength to go to 
our chamber, I threw myself into Lucie s arms and 
cried as if my heart would break. 

"She asked me what it meant? I said Hove 
you, Lucie ! And she said I love you, Lisette ! 

" But soon I found that Jean had sent no message 
that he had not come that all I told Lucie, of what my 
father had said, was new to her ; and she cried afresh ; 
and we dared say nothing to her of Jean. I fancied 
how it was ; for Jean s father was a proud gentleman, 
and would never make a second request of such bour 
geois as we. Soon we heard that he had gone away, 
and that he had taken Jean along with him. I longed 
to follow to write him even ; but, poor Lucie ! I was 
not certain but he might come back to claim her. Of 
ten and often I wandered up by his father s old country 
house, and I asked the steward s wife how he was look 
ing when he went away. Oh, said she, le pauvre 
jeune homme ; he was so sad to leave his home ! 

" And I thought to myself bitterly, did this make 
all his sadness ? 

" A whole year passed by, and we heard nothing of 



THE CABRIOLET. 197 

him. A regiment had come into the arrondissement, 
and a young officer came occasionally to see us. Now, 
Monsieur, I am ashamed to tell you what followed. 
Lucie had not forgotten Jean : and I God knows ! 
had not forgotten him. But papa said that the officer 
would make a good husband for me, and he told me as 
much himself. I did not disbelieve him ; but I did not 
love him as I had loved Jean, and I doubted if Jean 
would come back, and I knew not but he would come 
back to marry Lucie, though I felt sure that he loved 
me better than Lucie. So, Monsieur, it happened that 
I married the young officer, and became a soldier s wife, 
and in a month went away from my old home. 

" But that was not the worst, Monsieur ; before I 
went, there came a letter from Paris for me, in Jean s 
own writing." 

Madame turned her head again. Even the postillion 
had suffered his horses to get into a dog-trot jog, that 
he now made up for by a terrible thwacking, and a 
pestilent shower of oaths ; partly, perhaps, to deaden 
his feelings. 

" The letter," said madame, going on, " told me 
how he had loved me, how his father had told him 
what my father had said ; and how he had forbidden 
him in his pride, to make any second proposal ; and 
how he had gone away to forget his griefs, but could 
not ; and he spoke of a time, when he would come back 



198 SEVEN STORIES, 

and claim me, even though he should forget and leave 
his father. The whole night I cried over that letter, 
but never showed it to Lucie. I was glad that I was 
going away ; but I could not love my husband. 

" You do not know how bitter the parting was for 
me ; not so much to leave my father and Lucie, and 
Jacques, but the old scenes where I had wandered with 
Jean, and where we had played together, and where he 
was to come back again perhaps, and think as he would 
of me. I could not write him a letter even. I was 
young then, and did not know but my duty to my hus 
band would forbid it. But I left a little locket he had 
given me, and took out his hair, and put in place of it 
a lock of my own, and scratched upon the back with a 
needle Jean, I loved you ; it is too late ; I am mar 
ried ; J en pleurs ! And I handed it to little Jacques, 
and made him promise to show it to no one, but to hand 
to Jean, if he ever came again to Semur. Then I kissed 
my father, and my sister, and little Jacques again and 
again, and bid them all adieu as well as I could for my 
tears ; I have never been in Semur since, Monsieur." 

" And what became of Jean? " 

u You know," continued she, " that I could not love 
my husband, and I was glad we were going far away, 
where I hoped I might forget all that had happened at 
home ; but God did not so arrange it. 

" We were staying in Montpelier ; you have been 



THE CABRIOLET. 199 

in Montpelier, Monsieur, and will remember the pretty 
houses along the Rue de Paris ; in one of them we were 
living. Every month or two came letters from Lucie 
sad, very sad, at the first and I forgot about myself 
through pity of her. At length came one which told 
me that Jean had come back ; and it went on to say 
how well he was looking. Poor Lucie did not know 
how it all went to my soul, and how many tears her let 
ters cost me. 

"Afterward came letters in gayer temper still 
full of the praises of Jean ; and she wondered why I was 
not glad to hear so much of him, and wondered that my 
letters were growing so gloomy. Another letter came 
still gayer, and a postscript that cut me to the heart ; 
the postscript was in Jacques scrawling hand, and said 
that all the village believed that Jean was to marry sis 
ter Lucie. We shall be so glad, it said, if you will 
come home to the wedding ! 

" Oh, Monsieur, I had thought I loved Lucie. I 
am afraid I did not. I wrote no answer ; I could 
not. By-and-by came a thick letter with two little doves 
upon the seal. I went to my room and barred the door, 
and cried over it, withoat daring to open it. The truth 
was as I had feared Jean had married Lucie. Oh, my 
feelings my bitter feelings, Monsieur ! Pray Heaven 
you may never have such ! 

" My husband grew indignant at my sadness, and I 



200 SEVEN STORIES. 

disliked him more and more. Again we changed our 
quarters to the mountains, where the troops had been 
ordered, and for a very long time no letter came to me 
from home. I had scarce a heart to write, and spent 
day after day in my chamber. "We were five years along 
the Pyrenees ; you remember the high mountains about 
Pau, and the snowy tops that you can see from the 
houses ; but I enjoyed nothing of it all. By-and-by 
came a letter with a black seal, in the straggling hand 
of my poor father, saying that Jean and Lucie had gone 
over the sea to the Isle of Mauritius, and that little 
Jacques had sickened of a fever and was dead. I 
longed to go and see my old father ; but my husband 
could not leave, and he was suspicious of me, and 
would not suffer me to travel across France alone. 

" So I spent years more only one letter coming to 
me in all that time whether stopped by my husband s 
orders or not I do not know. At length he was ordered 
with his regiment to Chalons sur Marne ; there were 
old friends of his at Chalons, with whom he is stopping 
now. We passed through Paris and I saw all its won 
ders ; yet I longed to get toward home. At length we 
set off for Chalons. It was five days before I could 
get my husband s leave to ride over to my old town. 
I am afraid he has grown to hate me now. 

" You see that old Chateau in ruins," says she, 
pointing out a mossy remnant of castle, on a hillock to 



THE CABRIOLET. 201 

the left " it is only two kilometres from Semur. I have 
been there often with Jean and Lucie," and madame 
looks earnestly, and with her whole heart in her eyes, 
at the tottering old ruin. We ask the postillion the 
name, and jot it down in our note-book. 

u And your father knows nothing of your return?" 

" I have written from Chalons," resumed madame, 
" but whether he be alive to read it, I do not know." 

And she begins now to detect the cottages, on which 
in this old country ten years would make but little dif 
ference. The roofs are covered over with that dappled 
moss you see in Watelet s pictures, and the high stone 
court-yards are gray with damp and age. 

" La, voila /" at length exclaims madame, clapping 
her hands ; and in the valley into which we have just 
turned, and are now crick-cracking along in the crazy 
old cabriolet, appears the tall spire of Semur. A brown 
tower or two flank it, and there is a group of gray 
roofs mingled with the trees. 

Madame keeps her hands clasped and is silent. 

The postillion gives his hat a jaunty air, and crosses 
himself as we pass a church by the way ; and the farm 
eries pass us one by one ; then come the paved streets, 
and the pigs, and the turbaned women in sabots, and 
boys eyes, all intent ; and thick houses, and provincial 
shops. 

" The same dear old town of Semur ! " says our fe- 
13* 



202 SEVEN STORIES. 

male companion. And with a crack and a rumble, and 
a jolt, we are presently at the door of the inn. 

The woman runs her eye hastily over the inn loun 
gers ; apparently she is dissatisfied. We clamber down 
and assist her to dismount. 

" Shall we make any inquiries for her ? " 

" Oh, Mon Dieu ! fai trop de peur ! " She is 
afraid to ask ; she will go see ; and away she starts 
turns throws back her veil asks pardon " we have 
been so kind " bids God bless us waves her hand 
and disappears around an angle of the old inn. 

Tis the last we see of her ; for, in ten minutes we 
are rattling away toward Dole and the Juras. 



SIXTH STORY: 



THE COUNT PESARO. 



SIXTH STORY. 



The Count Pesaro. 

I AM living in a garden, in the middle of the water. 
Old arbors, made from trellised poles, which are 
blackened with storms and with years, stretch down 
through the centre of this garden, and are covered over 
with the interlacing limbs of Lombard grape-vines. 
At the end of this arbor-walk not, it is true, very long, 
but neatly gravelled and cleanly kept is a low pavilion, 
with an embowed window which looks out upon the 
Grand Canal of Venice. 

A painting of some Venetian artist, who lived before 
the garden was planted, hangs upon the wall of the pa 
vilion, and receives a light, on one side subdued by the 
jutting fragments of a ruined palace, and on the other 
reflected brightly from the green surface of the water. 

The pavilion is built in the angle of those palace 



206 SEVEN STORIES. 

walls which inclose the garden, and which were never 
raised to their full height. They offer, in their broken 
and half-ruined state, a mournful commentary upon the 
life of that dissolute republic which ended suddenly a 
half century ago ; since which time no stone has been 
added to the palace walls. An iron paling, of flash ap 
pearance, swings where the palace doors should have 
hung. The windows are filled with mortar and brick, 
save the one where my pavilion looks upon the water. 
The huge lion heads that stand out here and there along 
the foundation stones, are grimy with the sea-weed which 
the salt tide feeds : and what should have been the court 
of the palace is given up to the culture of a few sour 
grapes of Lombardy, and to the morning strolls of a 
stranger from a republic beyond the ocean. 

From the pavilion window, I can count the old 
homes of five Doges and of twenty noble Venetian fam 
ilies ; but there is no family of either Doge or noble in 
any of them now. Two of the grandest are turned 
into lodging-houses for strangers ; the upper balcony a 
richly-wrought marble balcony of the palace of the 
most noble Ducal family of the Justiniani, is now de 
corated with the black and white sign-board of my late 
host, Monsieur Marseille, keeper of the Hotel de ? Eu 
rope. Another grand pile, which rises just opposite to 
me, is filled with the degenerate officials of the moulder 
ing municipality of Venice. I see them day by day saun- 



THE COUNT PESARO. 207 

tering idly at the windows, or strutting with vain im 
portance in the corridors which a century ago echoed 
the steps of very noble and very corrupt women. Still 
others bear over the rich sculptured cornices of their 
doors, among the marble masks and flowers, the painted 
double-headed eagle of the Emperor Francis ; and the 
men I see moving with a stealthy pace over the marble 
stairs, are miserable Italian hirelings, who wear the 
livery, reverence the power, and chant the praises of their 
Austrian master. 

All day long the gondolas glide back and forth over 
the green water of the canal so near, that I can distin 
guish faces under the sombre canopies of the boats, and 
admire the neatly-gloved hands of ladies, or the martial 
air of our military rulers. At night, too, when I choose 
to linger with the blinds unclosed, I can see the lights 
trailing from far down by the Square of St. Mark, when 
no sound of the oars is heard ; and can watch their 
growing glimmer, and presently hear the distant ripple, 
and see the lanterns shining brighter and brighter, and 
hear the oar dip nearer and nearer, until with a dash 
a blaze, and a shadow of black they pass. 

The bay window of my pavilion, jutting from the 
palace ruin, has marble steps leading down to the water. 
At ten o clock of the morning, if the sun is bright, my 
gondolier, Guiseppe, is moored at one of the lions heads, 
in his black boat. A half hour s easy sail along the 



208 SEVEN STORIES. 

path of the Grand Canal, will set me down at the foot 
of the Rialto. A score of palaces fling their shadows 
across the way I pass over, between the Rialto and the 
garden court ; and a score more, catch the sun upon 
their fronts, and reflect it dazzlingly. But, apart from 
the life which the sun and the water lend to them, they 
have all a dead look. The foundations are swayed and 
cracked. Gloomy-looking shutters of rough boards 
close up the window-openings of sculptured marble. 
Newly-washed linen is hung out to dry upon the palace 
balconies. 

Even the scattered noble families which retain the 
larger piles of building are too poor and powerless to 
arrest the growing decay, or to keep up any show of 
state. A black cockade upon the hat of their gondolier, 
with a faded crimson waistcoat for livery, and a box at 
the Fenice Theatre, make up the only ostensible signs 
of a vain rank and of an expiring fortune. 

If the whim or the business of the morning lead me 
in an opposite direction, a few strokes of the oar will 
carry my gondola under the shadow of those two gran 
ite columns which belong to every picture of Venice, 
and which are crowned with the winged lion of St. 
Mark, and the patron Saint Theodore. Here is the 
gathering-place of all strangers and loiterers ; and one 
may wander at will under the arcades of the Ducal Pal 
ace, or over the billowy floor of the cathedral church. 



THE COUNT PESARO. 209 

But there is a tramping of feet in this neighbor 
hood, and an active commerce in flowers and oranges, 
and a business-like effrontery in lame old men, who serve 
as valets-de-place, that fatigue me that seem altogether 
out of keeping with the proper gloom and mould and 
sloth of the dying city. 

My more frequent excursions are in another quarter. 
Traversing the garden arbor of which I have spoken, 
and passing through the corridor of the house which 
skirts the garden, I find myself upon the edge of a nar 
row canal, shaded by crumbling houses, which are in 
habited by a ghost-like people, whom you see gliding in 
and out only in the gray of the morning or at twilight. 
The narrow canal has a foot- way by its side, along which 
passes an occasional bawling fish-merchant, who carries 
his stock in a small willow crate upon his head ; cold- 
looking, lean women, with shawls drawn over them like 
cowls, and stooping and slip-shod, sometimes shuffle 
along the path, with cabbages under their arms, and dis 
appear down one of the dark courts which open on the 
canal. 

I think there must be a school in the neighborhood ; 
for not unirequently a bevy of boys (a very rare sight 
in Venice) passes under my window, under the eye of a 
broad-hatted priest in a long black coat. But the boys, 
I have observed, are sallow-faced, and have a withered, 
mature look, as if they had grown old before their time. 



210 SEVEN STORIES. 

They seem to have inherited a part of the decay which 
belongs to the desolate city ; their laugh, as it comes to 
my ear, is very hollow and vague, with none of the rol 
licking glee in it which is bred of green fields and sun 
shine. 

A funeral, on the contrary when it passes, as it 
sometimes has done, after twilight, with priests in white 
capes, and candles flaunting a yellow, sickly light upon 
the still water of the canal seems to agree with the 
place and with the people. The sight does not shock, 
as it does in cities which are alive with action or with 
sunshine ; but, like a burst of laughter at a feast, the 
monotonous funeral chant chimes with the mournful 
habit of the place, and death seems to be only a louder 
echo of the life. 

A little distance away, there is a bridge which crosses 
this canal ; a dingy alley I find, at its end conducts 
through slumberous houses to a narrow quay and a 
broad sheet of water. Beyond the water lies the island 
of Giudecca ; between which and the quay I am upon, 
lie moored the greater part of those sea-going craft 
which supply now all the needs of the port of Venice. 

Here are quaint vessels from Chioggia, at the other 
end of the Lagoon, which have not changed their fash 
ion in a hundred years. They have the same high peak 
and stern which they had in the days of the Doges ; 
and a painted Virgin at the bow is a constant prayer 



THE COUNT PESARO. 211 

against peril. Here are clumsy feluccas from Crete and 
the Ionian islands, with Greek sailors half-clad, who 
have the same nut-brown faces and lithe limbs you see 
in old pictures. 

The canal of the Giudecca stretches to the westward, 
dividing the island of the same name from the body 
of the city, and then loses itself in the wide, lazy sweep 
of the Lagoon ; there, you see little isles with tall bell- 
towers, and scattered lateen-rigged vessels, and square- 
armed colliers from England, and low-lying fields of 
rushes all alike seeming to float upon the surface of 
the water. 

When the sun is near its setting, you cannot ima 
gine the witching beauty of this scene : the blue moun 
tains of Treviso rise from the distant edge of the La 
goon in sharp, pyramidal forms ; they grow less and 
less in size as they sweep to the south, till finally where 
the smooth water makes the horizon-line you can see, 
five miles away, the trees of the last shore, seeming to 
rise from the sea, and standing with all their lines firm 
ly and darkly drawn against a bright orange sky. 

From this quay a favorite walk of mine as from 
a vessel on the ocean, I see the sun dying each night in 
the water. Add only to what I have said of the view a 
warm, purple glow to the whole western half of the 
heavens the long shadow of a ship in the middle dis 
tance, and the sound of a hundred sweet-toned vesper 



212 8E VEN STORIES. 

bells ringing from out all the towers of Venice, and 
floating, and mellowing, and dying along the placid sur 
face of the sea and you will have some notion of a quiet 
Venetian evening. 

Upon the bridges which spring with a light marble 
arch across the side canals are grouped the figures of 
loitering gondoliers. Their shaggy brown coats, with 
pointed hoods, their tasselled caps, their crimson neck 
ties, and their attitudes of a lazy grace, as they lean 
against the light stone balustrades, are all in happy 
keeping with the scene. A marching company of priests, 
two by two, with their broad hats nearly touching, 
sometimes passes me ; and their waving black cloaks stir 
the air, like the wings of ill-omened birds. A lean beg 
gar who has been sunning himself throughout the day 
in the lee of a palace wall, steals out cautiously, as he 
sees me approach, and doffs his cap, and thrusts forward 
his hand, wi .h a cringing side-cast of the head, making 
an inimitable pantomime of entreaty ; and a coin so small 
that I am ashamed to name it, brings a melodious " Ben 
edetto " on my head. 

I have come, indeed, to know every face which makes 
its appearance along the quay of the Giudecca. A beetle- 
browed man, with ragged children and a slatternly wife, 
has lost all my sympathy by his perverse constancy in 
begging and in asking blessings. A dog in an upper 
balcony, which barked at me obstreperously on the first 



THE COUNT PESARO. 213 

week of my appearance, subdued his bark to a low growl 
after a fortnight, and now he makes only an inquiring 
thrust of his nose through the balcony bars ; and, having 
scented an old acquaintance, retires with quiet gravity. 

Most of all, I have remarked an old gentleman, 
whom I scarce ever fail to meet at about the vesper 
hour, in a long brown overcoat, of an antique fashion, 
and wearing a hat which must have been the mode at 
least forty years ago. His constant companion is a 
young woman, with a very sweet, pale face, who clings 
timidly to his arm ; and who, like her protector, is clad 
always in a sober-colored dress of an old date. Her 
features are very delicate, and her hair, like that of all 
the Venetian women, singularly beautiful. There is no 
look of likeness between them, or I should have taken 
them for father and daughter. They seem to talk but 
little together ; and I have sometimes thought that the 
poor girl might be the victim of one of those savage 
marriages of Europe, by which beauty and youth are 
frequently tied for some reasons of family or property 
to decrepitude and age. 

Yet the old gentleman has a very firm step and a 
proud look of the eye, which he keeps fixed steadfastly 
before him, scarce deigning to notice any passer-by. 
The girl, too or perhaps I should rather say the woman 
seems struggling to maintain the same indifference 
with the old gentleman ; and all her side-looks are very 
furtive and subdued. 



214 XEVEN STORIES. 

They walk rapidly, and always disappear down a 
narrow court which is by the farther bridge of the quay, 
and which leads into a mouldering quarter of the city. 
They speak to no one ; they do not even salute, so far 
as I have seen, a single one of the parish priests who 
glide back and forth upon the walk by the Giudecca. 
Once only, a gondolier, with a flimsy black cockade, who 
was loitering at the door of a wine-shop, lifted his hat 
as they passed in a very respectful manner ; but neither 
man or woman seemed to acknowledge the salutation. 

The steadfast look of the old gentleman, and the 
clinging hold of the young woman upon his arm, have 
once or twice induced me to believe him blind. But his 
assured step upon the uneven surface of the stones, and 
the readiness with which he meets the stairs of the suc 
cessive bridges, have satisfied me that it cannot be. 

I am quite sure there is some mystery about the cou 
ple some old family story, perhaps, of wrong or of 
crime, which, in its small way, might throw a light upon 
the tyranny or the license which contributed to the wreck 
of the Venetian State. I have hinted as much to my 
professor of languages who is a wiry little man, with 
ferret eyes and who has promised to clear up whatever 
mystery may lie in the matter. 

I shall hardly see him, however, again being now 
Christmas time for a week to come. 

The Christmas season drags heavily at Venice. 



THE COUNT PESARO. 215 

The people may possibly be good Christians, but they 
are certainly not cheerful ones. The air, indeed, has a 
Christmas- like cold in its breath ; but there is no cheer 
of blazing fires to quicken one s thankfulness, and to 
crackle a Christmas prayer for the bounties of the 
year. 

The pinched old women steal through the dim and 
narrow pass-ways, with little earthen pots of live coals 
the only fire which ever blesses their dismal homes. 
No frost lies along the fields with a silvery white coat, 
stiffening the grass tips, and making eyes sparkle and 
cheeks tingle ; but the Venetian winter overtakes you 
adrift cutting you through with cold winds, that howl 
among the ancient houses dampening every blast with 
the always present water, and bringing cold tokens 
from the land-winter, in huge ice-cakes, which float 
wide and drearily down the Lagoon. 

There are no Christmas songs, and no Christmas 
trees. Only the churches light up their chilly vaults 
with a sickly blaze of candles ; and the devout poor 
ones, finding comfort in the air softened by the burning 
of incense, kneel down for hours together. The dust 
rests thickly on the tombs of nobles and of Doges, who 
lie in the churches ; dark pictures of Tintoretto stare at 
you from behind the altars ; the monotone of a chant 
rises in a distant corner ; beggars, with filthy blankets 
drawn over their heads, thrust their meagre hands at 



216 SEVEN STORIES. 

you ; and a chill dampness cleaves to you until you go 
out into the sunlight again. 

One bright streak of this sunshine lies all day long 
upon the Biva,* which stretches from the ducal palace 
to the arsenal. Here is always gathered a motley 
throng of soldiers, of jugglers, of Punch-players, and 
of the picturesque Turkish and Cretan sailors. Jostling 
through this crowd, and passing the southern arcade of 
the Palace, you meet at mid-afternoon of the Christmas 
season with troops of ladies, who lounge up and down 
over the square of St. Mark s in a kind of solemn saun 
ter, that I am sure can be seen nowhere else. Gone-by 
fashions of Paris flame upon the heads of pale-cheeked 
women, and weazen-faced old men struggle through 
the mass, with anxious and doubting daughters clinging 
closely to their arms. 

The officers of the occupying army stride haughtily 
upon the Place, eyeing with insolence whatever of beauty 
is to be seen, and showing by every look and gesture 
that they are the masters, and the others the menials. 

I was looking on this strange grouping of people 
not long ago, upon a festal day of the Christmas season, 
when my eye fell upon the old gentleman whom I had 
been accustomed to see upon the quiet Eiva of the Zat- 
tere across the Grand Canal. His pretty meek-faced 
companion was beside him. They paced up and down 

* A Venetian term for quay. 



THE COUNT PESARO. 217 

with the same calm, dispassionate faces, there in the eye 
of St. Mark s and of the crowd, which they had worn 
in the view of the Lagoon and of the silent, solemn 
sunsets. 

It is true they had now gala dresses ; but so old, so 
quaint, that they seemed to belong, as they really did, 
to an age gone by. The old gentleman wore a bell- 
shaped hat, such as one sees in the pictures of the close 
of the last century, and its material was not of the shiny, 
silky substance of the present day, but of rich beaver. 
The lady, too, showed a face delicate as before, but set 
off with a coiffure so long gone by that its very age re 
lieved it from oddity, and made me think I was looking 
at some sweet picture of a half century ago. The rich 
est of that old Venetian lace, which provokes always 
the covetousness of travelling ladies, belonged to her 
costume, and agreed charmingly with her quiet manner, 
and with the forlorn air which added such a pleasing 
mystery to the couple. 

I could not observe that they seemed nearer to 
friends or to kin in the middle of the crowd, than upon 
the silent quay of the Zattere, where I had so often seen 
them before. They appeared to be taking their gala 
walk in memory of old days, utterly neglectful of all 
around them, and living, as it were, an interior life 
sustained only by association, which clung to the gaunt 
shadow of the Campanile, and to the brilliant front of 

San Marco, with a loving and a pious fondness. 
10 



218 SEVEN STORIES. 

It is not to be wondered at, indeed, that those of 
old Venetian blood should cherish vain and proud re 
grets. They are living in the shadows of a great past. 
An inferior race of creatures occupy the places of the 
rich and the powerful. The very griffins mock at them 
from the sculptured walls, and everywhere what is new 
is dwarfed by contrast with the old. 

I followed the old gentleman after a while into the 
church of St. Mark. He walked reverently through the 
vestibule, and put on a religious air that startled me. 
Passing in at the central door, and slipping softly over 
the wavy floor of mosaics, he knelt, with his companion, 
at that little altar of the Virgin upon the left, where the 
lights are always burning. They both bowed low, and 
showed a fervor of devotion which is but rarely seen in 
either Protestant or Popish churches. 

I felt sure that a great grief of some kind rested on 
them, and I hoped with all my heart that the Virgin 
might heal it. Presently they raised their heads to 
gether, as if their prayers had been in concert ; they 
crossed themselves ; the old gentleman cast a look of 
mournful admiration over the golden ceiling, and into 
the obscure depths of the vaulted temple, beckoned to 
his companion, and turned to pass out. 

There was something inexpressibly touching in the 
manner of both, as they went through the final form of 
devotion, at the doorway. It seemed to me that they 



THE COUNT PESARO. 219 

saw in this temple hallowed by religion, the liveliest 
traces of the ancient Venetian grandeur ; here, indeed, 
are the only monuments of the past Venetian splendor 
which are still consecrated to their old service. The 
Palace has passed into the keeping of strangers, and idle 
soldiers, talking a new language, loiter under the arcades ; 
the basins of the Arsenal are occupied by a few disabled 
vessels of foreign build ; but in the churches the same 
God is worshiped, the same prayers are said, and the 
same saints rule, from among the urns of the fathers 
the devotions of the children. 

I could not forbear following the old gentleman and 
his companion, at a respectful distance, through the 
neighboring alleys. They glided before me like some 
spectral inhabitants of the ancient city, who had gloried 
in its splendor, and who had come back to mourn over 
its decay. Without a thought of tracing them to their 
home, and indeed without any distinctness of intent, 
save only the chase of a phantom thought, I followed 
them through alley after alley. The paving stones were 
damp and dark ; the cornices of the houses almost met 
overhead. The murmur of the voices upon the Square 
of St. Mark s died away in the distance. The echoes 
of a few scattered foot-falls alone broke the silence. 

Sometimes I lost sight of them at an angle of the 
narrow street, and presently came again in full view of 
the old gentleman, resolutely striding on. I cannot tell 



220 SEVEN STORIES. 

how far it was from St. Mark s, when they stopped at a 
tall doorway in the Calle Justiniana. I had passed that 
way before, and had remarked an ancient bronze knocker 
which hung upon the door, of rich Venetian sculpture. 
I had even entertained the sacrilegious thought of nego 
tiating with the porter, or whoever might be the owner, 
for its purchase. 

A shrill voice from above responded to the summons 
of the old gentleman, and with a click the latch flew 
back and the door stood ajar. I came up in time to 
catch a glimpse of the little square court within. It was 
like that of most of the old houses of Venice. A cistern 
curbing, richly wrought out of a single block of Istrian 
marble, stood in the centre, set off with grotesque heads 
of cherubs and of saints. The paving stones were 
green and mossy, save one narrow pathway, which led 
over them to the cistern. The stairway, upon one side 
of the court, was high and steep ; the balustrade was 
adorned with battered figures of lions heads and of grif 
fins ; at the landing-place was an open balcony, from 
which lofty windows, with the rich, pointed Venetian 
tops, opened upon the principal suite of the house. But 
all of these were closed with rough board shutters, here 
and there slanting from their hinges, and showing broken 
panes of glass, and the disorder of a neglected apart 
ment. A fragment of a faded fresco still flamed within 
the balcony between the windows. 



THE COUNT PE8ARO. 221 

Only upon the floor above was there any sign of life. 
There I caught a glimpse of a white curtain, a cat doz 
ing in a half-opened window, and of a pot of flowers. 

I conjectured how it was : proud birth and poverty 
were joined in the old man. The great halls of the 
house, which were once festive, were utterly deserted. 
The sun, which reached only to the upper rooms, 
brought a little warmth with it. No fire was made to 
drive away the damps below. 

A few pictures, it may be, remained upon the walls 
of the closed rooms, the work of esteemed artists, show 
ing forth some scene of battle or of state, in which the 
founders of the house had reaped honors from the Re 
public. But the richly carved tables and quaint old 
chairs, had, I did not doubt, slipped away one by one 
to some Jew furniture-vender living near, who had 
preyed with fawning and with profit upon the old gen 
tleman s humbled condition. 

The daughter, too if indeed the young woman were 
his daughter had, I doubted not, slipped old fragments 
of Venetian lace into her reticule, on days of bitter cold 
or of casual illness, to exchange against some little com 
fort for the old gentleman. 

I knew, indeed, that in this way much of the rich 
cabinet-work, for which the Venetian artisans were so 
famous two hundred years ago, had gone to supply the 
modern palaces of Russian nobles by Moscow and No- 
vogorod. 



222 SEVEN 8TORIE8. 

Old time friendships, I knew, too often went to wreck 
in the midst of such destitution ; and there are those of 
ancient lineage living in Venice very lonely and deserted, 
only because their pride forbids that a friend should 
witness the extent of their poverty. Yet even these 
make some exterior show of dignity ; they put black 
cockades upon the hats of their servants, or, by a little 
judicious management, they make their solitary fag of 
all work do duty in a faded livery at the stern of a gon 
dola. They have, moreover, many of them, their little 
remnants of country property, in the neighborhood of 
Oderzo or Padua, where they go to economize the sum 
mer months, and balance a carnival season at the Fenice, 
by living upon vegetable diet, and wearing out the faded 
finery of the winter. 

But the old gentleman about whom I now felt my 
self entertaining a deep concern, seemed to be even more 
friendless and pitiable than these. He appeared to com 
mune only with the phantoms of the past ; and I must 
say that I admired his noble indifference to the degen 
erate outcasts around him. 

My ferret-eyed Professor made his appearance to 
ward the close of the Christmas week, in a very hilari 
ous humor. He is one of those happily constituted 
creatures who never thinks of to-morrow, if only his 
dinner of to-day is secure. I had contributed to his 
cheer by inviting him to a quiet lunch (if quiet can be 



THE COUNT PESARO. 223 

predicated of a bustling Italian Osteria) in the eating- 
rooms of the Vapore. I had a hope of learning some 
thing from him in respect to the old gentleman of the 
Zattere. 

I recalled my former mention of him, and ordered a 
pint of Covegliano, which is a fiery little wine of a very 
communicative and cheerful aroma. 

" Benissimo" said the Professor, but whether of the 
wine or of the subject of my inquiry I could not tell. 

I related to him what I had seen in the Christmas 
time upon the Place, and described the parties more 
fully. 

The Professor was on the alert. 

I mentioned that I had traced them to a certain tall 
doorway he might remember in the Calle Justiniana. 

" Lo cognosce," said the Professor, twinkling his 
eye. " It is the Signor Nolile Pesaro : poor gentle 
man ! " and he touched his temple significantly, as if the 
old noble had a failing in his mind. 

And the lady?" said I. 

u La sua Jigliuola^ said he, filling his glass ; after 
which he waved his forefinger back and forth in an ex 
pressive manner, as much as to say, " poor girl, her fate 
is hard." 

With that he filled the glass again, and told me this 
story of the Count Pesaro and his daughter. 



224 SEVEN STORIES. 



PESARO was once a very great name in Venice. 
There was in former times a Doge Pesaro, and 
there were high ministers of state, and ambassadors 
to foreign courts belonging to the house. In the old 
church of the Frari, upon the further side of the Grand 
Canal, is a painting of Titian s, in which a family of 
the Pesaro appears kneeling before the blessed Virgin. 
A gorgeously-sculptured palace between the Rialto and 
the Golden House is still known as the Pesaro Palace ; 
but the family which built it, and which dwelt there, 
has long since lost all claim to its cherubs and griffins ; 
only the crumbling mansion where lives the old Count 
and his daughter now boasts any living holders of the 
Pesaro name. 

These keep mostly upon the topmost floor of the 
house, where a little sunshine finds its way, and plays 
hospitably around the flower-pots which the daughter 
has arranged upon a ledge of the window. Below 
as I had thought the rooms are dark and dismal. The 
rich furniture which belonged to them once is gone 
only a painting or two, by famous Venetian artists, now 
hang upon the walls. They are portraits of near rela 
tions, and the broken old gentleman, they say, lingers 
for hours about them in gloomy silence. 



THE COUNT PESARO. 225 

So long ago as the middle of the last century the 
family had become small, and reduced in wealth. The 
head of the house, however, was an important member 
of the State, and was suspected (for such things were 
never known in Venice) to have a voice in the terrible 
Council of Three. 

This man, the Count Giovanni Pesaro, whose man 
ner was stern, and whose affections seemed all of them 
to have become absorbed in the mysteries of the State, 
was a widower. There were stories that even the 
Countess in her life-time had fallen under the suspicions 
of the Council of Inquisition, and that the silent hus 
band either could not or would not guard her from the 
cruel watch which destroyed her happiness and short 
ened her days. 

She left two sons, Antonio and Enrico. By a rule 
of the Venetian State not more than one son of a noble 
family was allowed to marry, except their fortune was 
great enough to maintain the dignity of a divided house 
hold. The loss of Candia and the gaming-tables of the 
Ridotto had together so far diminished the wealth of the 
Count Pesaro, that Antonio alone was privileged to 
choose a bride, and under the advice of a State which 
exercised a more than fatherly interest in those matters 
he was very early betrothed to a daughter of the Con- 
tarini. 

But Antonio wore a careless and dissolute habit of 
10* 



226 SEVEN 8TORIES. 

life ; he indulged freely in the licentious intrigues of 
Venice, and showed little respect for the claims which 
bound him to a noble maiden, whom he had scarcely 
seen. 

Enrico, the younger son, destined at one time for 
the Church, had more caution but far less generosity in 
his nature ; and covering his dissoluteness under the 
mask of sanctity, he chafed himself into a bitter jealousy 
of the brother whose privileges so far exceeded his own. 
Fra Paolo, his priestly tutor and companion, was a monk 
of the order of Franciscans, who, like many of the Ve 
netian priesthood in the latter days of the oligarchy, 
paid little heed to his vows, and used the stole and the 
mask to conceal the appetites of a debased nature. 
With his assistance Enrico took a delight in plotting the 
discomfiture of the secret intrigues of his brother, and 
in bringing to the ears of the Contarini the scandal at 
taching to the affianced lover of their noble daughter. 

Affairs stood in this wise in the ancient house of 
Pesaro when (it was in the latter part of the eighteenth 
century) one of the last royal ambassadors of France 
established himself in a palace near to the church of 
San Zaccaria, and separated only by a narrow canal 
from that occupied by the Count Pesaro. 

The life of foreign ambassadors, and most of all of 
those accredited from France, was always jealously 
watched in Venice, and many a householder who was so 



THE COUNT PESARO. 227 

unfortunate as to live in the neighborhood of an ambas 
sador s residence received secret orders to quit his 
abode, and only found a cause in its speedy occupation 
by those masked spies of the Republic who passed se 
cretly in and out of the Ducal Palace. 

The Inquisition, however, had its own reasons for 
leaving the Pesaro family undisturbed. Perhaps it 
was the design of the mysterious powers of the State to 
embroil the house of Pesaro in criminal correspondence 
with the envoy of France ; perhaps Fra Paolo, who had 
free access to the Pesaro Palace, was a spy of St. 
Mark s ; or perhaps (men whispered it in trembling) 
the stern Count Pesaro himself held a place in the terri 
ble Council of Three. 

The side canals of Venice are not wide, and looking 
across, where the jealous Venetian blinds do not forbid 
the view, one can easily observe the movements of an 
opposite neighbor. Most of the rooms of the palace of 
the ambassador were carefully screened ; but yet the 
water-door, the grand hall of entrance, and the marble 
stairway were fully exposed, and the quick eyes of An 
tonio and Enrico did not fail to notice a lithe figure, 
which from day to day glided over the marble steps, or 
threw its shadow across the marble hall. 

Blanche was the only daughter of the ambassador, 
and besides her there remained to him no family. She 
had just reached that age when the romance of life is 



228 SEVEN STORIES. 

strongest ; and the music stealing over the water from 
floating canopies, the masked figures passing like phan 
toms under the shadow of palaces, and all the license 
and silence of Venice, created for her a wild, strange 
charm, both mysterious and dangerous. The very 
secrecy of Venetian intrigues contrasted favorably in 
her romantic thought with the brilliant profligacy of the 
court of Versailles. 

Nor was her face or figure such as to pass unnoticed 
even among the most attractive of the Venetian beau 
ties. The brothers Pesaro, wearied of their jealous 
strife among the masked intrigantes who frequented the 
tables of the Kidotto, were kindled into wholly new 
endeavor by a sight of the blooming face of the West 
ern stranger. 

The difficulties which hedged all approach, served 
here (as they always serve) to quicken ingenuity and to 
multiply resources. The State was jealous of all com 
munication with the families of ambassadors ; marriage 
with an alien, on the part of a member of a noble family, 
was scrupulously forbidden. Antonio was already be 
trothed to the daughter of a noble house which never 
failed of means to avenge its wrongs. Enrico, the 
younger, was in the eye of the State sworn to celibacy 
and to the service of the Church. 

But the bright eyes of Blanche, and the piquancy of 
her girlish, open look, were stronger than the ties of a 
forced betrothal, or the mockery of monastic bonds. 



THE COUNT PESARO. 229 

Music from unseen musicians stole at night through 
the narrow canal where rose the palace of the Pesaro. 
Flowers from unseen hands were floated at morning 
upon the marble steps upon which the balconies of the 
Pesaro Palace looked down ; and always the eager and 
girlish Blanche kept strict watch through the kindly 
Venetian blinds for the figures which stole by night over 
the surface of the water, and for the lights which glim 
mered in the patrician house that stood over against the 
palace of her father. 

A French lady, moreover, brought with her from 
her own court more liberty for the revels of the Ducal 
Palace, and for the sight of the halls of the Ridotto, 
than belonged to the noble maidens of Venice. It was 
not strange that the Pesaro brothers followed her 
thither, or that the gondoliers who attended at the doors 
of the ambassador were accessible to the gold of the 
Venetian gallants. 

In all his other schemes Enrico had sought merely 
to defeat the intrigues of Antonio, and to gratify by 
daring and successful gallantries the pride of an offended 
brother, and of an offcast of the State. But in the 
pursuit of Blanche there was a new and livelier im 
pulse. His heart was stirred to a depth that had never 
before been reached ; and to a jealousy of Antonio was 
now added a defiance of the State, which had shorn 
him of privilege, and virtually condemned him to an 
aimless life. * 



230 SEVEN STORIES. 

But if Enrico was the more cautious and discreet, 
Antonio was the more bold and daring. There never 
was a lady young or old, French or Venetian, who did 
not prefer boldness to watchfulness, and audacity to cau 
tion. And therefore it was that Enrico kindled into a 
new passion which consumed all the old designs of his 
life lost ground in contention with the more adventur 
ous approaches of Antonio. 

Blanche, with the quick eye of a woman, and from 
the near windows of the palace of the ambassador, saw 
the admiration of the heirs of the Pesaro house, and 
looked with the greater favor upon the bolder adventures 
of Antonio. The watchful eyes of Enrico and of the 
masked Fra Paolo, in the gatherings of the Ducal hall 
or in the saloons of the Bidotto, were not slow to ob 
serve the new and the dangerous favor which the senior 
heir of the Pesaro name was winning from the stranger 
lady. 

" It is well ; " said Enrico, as he sat closeted with his 
saintly adviser in a chamber of the Pesaro Palace, "the 
State will never permit an heir of a noble house to wed 
with the daughter of an alien ; the Contarini will never 
admit this stain upon their honor. Let the favor which 
Blanche of France shows to Antonio be known to the 
State j and Antonio is " 

" A banished man," said the Fra Paolo, softening 
the danger to the assumed fears of the brother. 



THE COUNT PESARO. 231 

" And what then ! " pursued Enrico doubtfully. 

" And then the discreet Enrico attains to the rights 
and privileges of his name." 

"And Blanche!" 

" You know the law of the State, my son." 

"A base law!" 

" Not so loud," said the cautious priest ; " the law 
has its exceptions. The ambassador is reputed rich. 
If his wealth could be transferred to the State of Venice 
all would be well." 

" It is worth the trial," said Enrico ; and he pressed 
a purse of gold into the hand of the devout Fra Paolo. 



II. 



rT\HE three Inquisitors of State were met in their 
J_ chamber of the Ducal Palace. Its floor was of al 
ternate squares of black and white marble, and its walls 
tapestried with dark hangings set off with silver fringe. 
They were examining, with their masks thrown aside, 
the accusations which a servitor had brought in from 
the Lion s Mouth, which opened in the wall at the head 
of the second stairway. 

Two of the inquisitors were dressed in black, and 
the third, who sat between the others a tall, stem man 
was robed in crimson. The face of the last grew 
troubled as his eye fell upon a strange accusation, affect- 



232 SJS YEN STORIES. 

ing his honor, and perhaps his own safety. For even 
this terrible council-chamber had its own law among its 
members, and its own punishment for indiscretion. 
More than once a patrician of Venice had disappeared 
suddenly from the eyes of men, and a mysterious mes 
sage came to the Great Council that a seat was vacant 
in the chamber of the Inquisition. 

The accusation which now startled the member of 
the Council was this : 

" Let the State beware ; the palace of Pesaro is 
very near to the palace of France ! 

u ONE OF THE CONTARINI." 

The Count Pesaro (for the inquisitor was none 
other) in a moment collected his thoughts. He had re 
marked the beautiful daughter of the ambassador ; he 
knew of the gallantries which filled the life of his son 
Antonio ; he recognized the jealousy of the Contarini. 

But in the members of the fearful court of Venice 
no tie was recognized but the tie which bound them to 
the mysterious authority of the State. The Count Pe 
saro knew well that the discovery of any secret inter 
course with the palace of the ambassador would be fol 
lowed by the grave punishment of his son ; he knew 
that any conspiracy with that son to shield him from the 
State would bring the forfeit of his life. Yet the In 
quisitor said, " Let the spies be doubled?" 

And the spies were doubled ; but the father, more 



THE COUNT PESARO. 233 

watchful and wakeful than all, discovered that it was 
not one son only, but both, who held guilty communica 
tion with the servitors of the ambassador s palace. There 
was little hope that it would long escape the knowledge 
of the Council. But the Count anticipated their action, 
by sacrificing the younger to the elder ; the gondolier 
of Enrico was seized, and brought to the chamber of 
torture. 

The father could not stay the judgment which pro 
nounced the exile of the son, and at night Enrico was 
arraigned before the three inquisitors : the masks con 
cealed his judges ; and the father penned the order by 
which he was conveyed, upon a galley of the State, to 
perpetual exile upon the island of Corfu. 

The rigor of the watch was now relaxed, and An 
tonio, fired by the secret and almost hopeless passion 
which he had reason to believe was returned with equal 
fervor, renewed his communications in the proscribed 
quarter. A double danger, however, awaited him. 
The old and constant jealousy of France which existed 
in the Venetian councils had gained new force ; all in 
tercourse with her ambassador was narrowly watched. 

Enrico, moreover, distracted by the failure of a 
forged accusation which had reacted to his own disad 
vantage, had found means to communicate with the 
scheming Fra Paolo. The suspicions of the Contarini 
family were secretly directed against the neglectful An- 



234 SEVEN STORIES. 

tonio. His steps were dogged by the spies of a power- 
fill and revengeful house. Accusations again found 
their way into the Lion s Mouth. Proofs were too 
plain and palpable to be rejected. The son of Pesaro 
had offended by disregarding engagements authorized 
and advised by the State. He had offended in projecting 
alliance with an alien ; he had offended in holding 
secret communication with the household of a foreign 
ambassador. 

The offence was great, and the punishment immi 
nent. An inquisitor who alleged excuses for the crimes 
of a relative was exposed to the charge of complicity. 
He who wore the crimson robe in the Council of the 
Inquisition was therefore silent. The mask, no less 
than the severe control which every member of the 
secret council exerted over his milder nature, con 
cealed the struggle going on in the bosom of the old 
Count Pesaro. The fellow-councillors had already seen 
the sacrifice of one son ; they could not doubt his con 
sent to that of the second. But the offence was now 
greater, and the punishment would be weightier. 

Antonio was the last scion of the noble house of 
which the inquisitor was chief, and the father triumphed 
at length over the minister of State ; yet none in the 
secret Council could perceive the triumph. None knew 
better than a participant in that mysterious power which 
ruled Venice by terror, how difficult would be any 
escape from its condemnation. 



THE COUNT PESARO. 235 



m. 



IT was two hours past midnight, and the lights had 
gone out along the palace-windows of Venice. The 
Count Pesaro had come back from the chamber of the 
Council ; but there were ears that caught the fall of his 
step as he landed at his palace door and passed to his 
apartment. Fra Paolo had spread the accusations 
which endangered the life of Antonio, and, still an in 
mate of the palace, he brooded over his schemes. 

He knew the step of the Count ; his quick ear 
traced it to the accustomed door. Again the step 
seemed to him to retrace the corridor stealthily, and to 
turn toward the apartment of Antonio. The watchful 
priest rose and stole after him. The corridor was dark ; 
but a glimmer of the moon, reflected from the canal, 
showed him the tall figure of the Count entering the 
door of his son. 

Paternal tenderness had not been characteristic of 
the father, and the unusual visit excited the priestly cu 
riosity. Gliding after, he placed himself by the cham 
ber, and overheard what few ever heard in those days 
in Venice the great Inquisitor of State sink to the 
level of a man and of a father. 

" My son," said the Count, after the first surprise 
of the sleeper was over, " you have offended against the 



236 8EVEN STORIES. 

State ; " and he enumerated the charges which had come 
before the Inquisition. 

" It is true," said Antonio. 

" The State never forgets or forgives," said the 
Count. 

" Never, when they have detected," said Antonio. 

" They know all," said the father. 

"Who know all?" asked Antonio earnestly. 

" The Council of Three." 

" You know it?" 

The Count stooped to whisper in his ear. 

Antonio started with terror : he knew of the popular 
rumor w^hich attributed to his father great influence in 
the State, but never until then did the truth come home 
to him, that he was living under the very eye of one of 
that mysterious Council, whose orders made even the 
Doge tremble. 

"Already," pursued the Count, "they determine 
your punishment : it will be severe ; how severe I can 
not tell ; perhaps " 

"Banishment?" 

" It may be worse, my son ; " and the Count was 
again the father of his child, folding to his heart, perhaps 
for the last time, what was dearer to him now than the 
honor or the safety of the State. 

But it was not for tearful sympathy only that the 
Count had made this midnight visit. There remained 



THE COUNT PESARO. 237 

a last hope of escape. The arrest of Antonio might 
follow in a day, or in two. Meantime the barges of the 
State were subject to orders penned by either member 
of the Council. 

It was arranged that a State barge should be sent 
to receive Antonio upon the following night, to convey 
him a captive to the Ducal Palace. As if to avoid ob 
servation, the barge should be ordered to pass by an 
unfrequented part of the city. The sbirri of the quar 
ter should receive counter orders to permit no boat to 
pass the canals. In the delay and altercation Antonio 
should make his way to a given place of refuge, where 
a swift gondola (he would know it by a crimson pen 
nant at the bow) should await him, to transport the 
fugitive beyond the Lagoon. 

His own prudence would command horses upon the 
Padua shore, and escape might be secured. Further 
intercourse with the Count would be dangerous, and 
open to suspicion ; and father and son bade adieu it 
might be forever. 

The priest slipped to his lair, in his corner of the 
wide Pesaro Palace ; and the Count also went to such 
repose as belongs to those on whom rest the cares and 
the crimes of empire. 

A day more only in Venice, for a young patrician 
whose gay life had made thirty years glide fast, was 
very short. There were many he feared to leave ; and 



238 SEVEN STORIES. 

there was one he dared not leave. The passion, that 
grew with its pains, for the fair Blanche, had ripened 
into a tempest of love. The young stranger had yielded 
to its sway ; and there lay already that bond between 
them which even Venetian honor scorned to undo. 

In hurried words, but with the fever of his feelings 
spent on the letter, he wrote to Blanche. He told her 
of his danger, of the hopelessness of his stay, of the 
punishment that threatened. He claimed that sacrifice 
of her home which she had already made of her heart. 
Her oarsmen were her slaves. The Lagoon was not so 
wide as the distance which a day might place between 
them forever. He prayed her as she loved him, and by 
the oaths already plighted upon the Venetian waters, to 
meet him upon the further shore toward Padua. He 
asked the old token, from the window of the palace op 
posite, which had given him promise in days gone. 

The keen eyes even of Fra Paolo did not detect the 
little crimson signal which hung on the following day 
from a window of the palace of the ambassador : but 
the wily priest was not inactive. He plotted the seizure 
and ruin of Antonio, and the return of his protector 
Enrico. An accusation was drawn that day from the 
Lion s Mouth without the chamber of the Inquisition, 
which carried fear into the midst of the Council. 

" Let the Three beware ! " said the accusation ; 
" true men are banished from Venice, and the guilty 



THE COUNT PESARO. 239 

escape. Enrico Pesaro languishes in Corfu ; and An 
tonio (if traitorous counsels avail him) escapes this 
this night. 

" Let the Council look well to the gondola with the 
crimson pennant, which at midnight crosses to the Pa 
dua shores ! " 

The inquisitors wore their masks ; but there was 
doubt and distrust concealed under them. 

" If treason be among us, it should be stayed speed 
ily," said one. 

And the rest said, " Amen ! " 

Suspicion fell naturally upon the councillor who wore 
the crimson robe ; the doors were cautiously guarded ; 
orders were given that none should pass or repass, were 
it the Doge himself, without a joint order of the Three. 
A State barge was despatched to keep watch upon the 
Lagoon ; and the official of the Inquisition bore a special 
commission. The person of the offender was of little 
importance, provided it could be known through what 
channel he had been warned of the secret action of the 
Great Council. It was felt, that if their secrecy was 
once gone, their mysterious power would be at an end. 
The Count saw his danger and trembled. 

The lights (save one in the chamber where Fra Pa 
olo watched) had gone out in the Pesaro Palace. The 
orders of the father were faithfully observed. The refuge 
was gained ; and in the gondola with the crimson pen- 



240 SEVEN STORIES. 

nant, with oarsmen who pressed swiftly toward the 
Padua shore, Antonio breathed freely. Venice was left 
behind ; but the signal of the opposite palace had not 
been unnoted, and Blanche would meet him and cheer 
his exile. 

Half the Lagoon was passed, and the towers of St. 
Mark were sinking upon the level sea, when a bright 
light blazed up in their wake. It came nearer and 
nearer. Antonio grew fearful. 

He bade the men pull lustily. Still the strange 
boat drew nearer ; and presently the fiery signal of St. 
Mark flamed upon the bow. It was a barge of the 
State. His oarsmen were palsied with terror. 

A moment more and the barge was beside them ; a 
masked figure, bearing the symbols of that dreadful 
power which none might resist and live, had entered the 
gondola. The commission he bore was such as none 
might refuse to obey. 

The fugitive listened to the masked figure 

; To Antonio Pesaro accused justly of secret deal 
ings with the ambassadors of France, forgetful of his 
oaths and of his duty to the State, and condemned 
therefore to die be it known that the only hope of 
escape from a power which has an eye and ear in every 
corner of the Republic, rests now in revealing the name 
of that one, be he great or small, who has warned him 
of his danger and made known a secret resolve of the 
State." 



THE COUNT PESARO. 241 

Antonio hesitated ; to refuse was death, and perhaps 
a torture which might compel his secret. On the other 
hand, the Count his father was high in power ; it seem 
ed scarcely possible that harm could come nigh to one 
holding place in the Great Council itself. Blanche, too, 
had deserted her home, and perilled life and character 
upon the chance of his escape. His death, or even his 
return, would make sure her ruin. 

The masked figure presented to him a tablet, upon 
which he wrote, with a faltering hand, the name of his 
informant, " the Count Pesaro. " 

But the Great Council was as cautious in those days, 
as it was cruel. Antonio possessed a secret which was 
safe nowhere in Europe. His oarsmen were bound. The 
barge of State was turned toward Venice. The gondola 
trailed after ; but Antonio was no longer within. The 
plash of a falling body, and a low cry of agony, were 
deadened by the brush of the oars, as the boat of St. 
Mark swept down toward the silent city. 

Three days thereafter the Doge and his privy council 
received a verbal message that a chair in the chamber 
of Inquisition was vacant, and there was needed a new 
wearer for the crimson robe. 

But not for weeks did the patricians of Venice miss 

the stately Count Pesaro from his haunts at the Broglio 

and the tables of the Ridotto. And when they knew at 

length, from the closed windows of his palace, and his 

11 



242 SEVEN STORIES. 

houseless servitors, that he was gone, they shook their 
heads mysteriously, but said never a word. 

The wretched Fra Paolo, in urging his claim for the 
absent Enrico, gave token that he knew of the sin and 
shame of the Count of Pesaro. Such knowledge no pri 
vate man might keep in the Venetian State and live. 
The poor priest was buried where no inscription might be 
written, and no friend might mourn. 

IV. 

IN those feeble days of Venice which went before the 
triumphant entry of Napoleon, when the Council 
of Three had themselves learned to tremble, and the 
Lion of St. Mark was humbled, there came to Venice, 
from the island of Corfu, a palsied old man whose name 
was Enrico Pesaro, bringing with him an only son who 
was called Antonio. 

The old man sought to gather such remnants of the 
ancient Pesaro estate as could be saved from the greedy 
hands of the government ; and he purchased rich masses 
for the rest of the souls of the murdered father and 
brother. 

He died when Venice died ; leaving as a legacy to 
his son a broken estate and the bruised heart, with which 
he had mourned the wrong done to his kindred. The 
boy Antonio had only mournful memories of the old 



THE COUNT PESARO. 243 

Venice, where his family once a family of honor, and 
of great deeds was cut down ; and the new Venice was 
a conquered city. 

In the train of the triumphant Army of Italy there 
came, after a few years, many whose families had been 
in times past banished and forgotten. An old love for the 
great city, whose banner had floated proudly in all seas, 
drew them to the shrine in the water, where the ashes 
of their fathers mouldered. Others wandered thither 
seeking vestiges of old inheritance ; or, it might be, 
traces of brothers, or of friends, long parted from them. 

Among these, there came, under the guardianship 
of a great French general, a pensive girl from Avignon 
on the Rhone. She seemed French in tongue, and yet 
she spoke well the language of Italy, and her name was 
that of a house which was once great in Venice. She 
sought both friends and inheritance. 

Her story was a singular one. Her grandfather 
was once royal ambassador to the State of Venice. Her 
mother had fled at night from his house, to meet upon 
the shores of the Lagoon a Venetian lover, who was of 
noble family, but a culprit of the State. As she ap 
proached the rendezvous, upon the fatal night, she 
found in the distance a flaming barge of St. Mark ; and 
presently after, heard the cry and struggles of some vic 
tim of State cast into the Lagoon. 

Her gondola came up in time to save Antonio Pesaro ! 



244 SEVEN STORIES. 

The government put no vigor in its search for drown 
ed men : and the fugitives, made man and wife, journeyed 
safely across Piedmont. The arm of St. Mark was very 
strong for vengeance, even in distant countries ; and the 
fugitive ones counted it safe to wear another name, 
until years should have made safe again the title of 
Pesaro. 

The wife had also to contend with the opposition of 
a father, whose abhorrence of the Venetian name would 
permit no reconciliation, and no royal sanction of the 
marriage. Thus they lived, outcasts from Venice, and 
outlawed in France, in the valley town of Avignon. 
With the death of Pesaro, the royal ambassador relented ; 
but kindness came too late. The daughter sought him 
only to bequeath to his care her child. 

But Blanche Pesaro, child as she was, could not love 
a parent who had not loved her mother ; and the royal 
ambassador, who could steel his heart toward a suffer 
ing daughter, could spend little sympathy upon her 
Italian child. Therefore Blanche was glad, under the 
protection of a republican general of Provence, to seek 
what friends or kindred might yet be found in the island 
city, where her father had once lived, and her mother 
had loved. She found there a young Count (for the 
title had been revived) Antonio Pesaro her own father s 
name ; and her heart warmed toward him, as to her 
nearest of kin. And the young Count Antonio Pesaro, 



THE COUNT PESARO. 245 

when he met this new cousin from the "West, felt his 
heart warming toward one whose story seemed to lift. 
a crime from off the memory of his father. There was 
no question of inheritance, for the two parties joined 
their claim, and Blanche became Countess of Pesaro. 

But the pensive face which had bloomed among the 
olives by Avignon, drooped under the harsh winds that 
whistle among the leaning houses of Venice. And the 
Count, who had inherited sadness, found other and 
stronger grief in the wasting away, and the death of 
Blanche, his wife. 

She died on a November day, in the tall, dismal 
house where the widowed Count now lives. And there 
the daughter, Blanche left him, arranges flowers on the 
the ledge of the topmost windows, where a little of the 
sunshine finds its way. 

The broken gentleman lingers for hours beside the 
portraits of the old Count, who was Inquisitor, and of 
Antonio, who had such wonderful escape ; and they say 
that he has inherited the deep self-reproaches which his 
father nourished, and that with stern and silent mourn 
ing for the sins and the weaknesses which have stained 
his family name, he strides, with his vacant air, through 
the ways of the ancient city, expecting no friend but 
death. 

Such was the story which my garrulous little Pro- 



246 SEVEN STORIES. 

fessor, warmed with the lively Italian wine, told to me 
in the Locanda del Vapore. 

And, judging as well as I can from the air of the old 
gentleman, and his daughter, whom I first saw upon the 
Quay of the Zattere, and from what I can learn through 
books of the ancient government of Venice, I think the 
story may be true. 

My lively little Professor says it is verissimo; which 
means, that it as true as anything (in Italian) can be. 



SEVENTH STORY. 



EMILE ROQUE. 



SEVENTH STORY: 



Emile Roque. 

I. 

IT may be very bad taste in me, but I must confess 
to a strong love for many of those old French 
painters who flourished during the last century, and at 
whom it is now quite the fashion to sneer. I do not al 
lude to the Poussins, of whom the best was more Ro 
man than Frenchman, and whose most striking pictures 
seem to me to wear no nationality of sentiment ; there 
is nothing lively and mercurial in them ; hardly any 
thing that is cheerful. But what a gayety there is in 
the Yanloos all of them ! What a lively prettiness in 
the little girl-faces of Greuze ! What a charming co 
quetry in the sheep and shepherdesses of Watteau ! 

To be sure the critics tell us that his country swains 
and nymphs are far more arch and charming than any 
11* 



250 SEVEN STORIES. 

swains ever were in nature ; and that his goats even, 
browse, and listen and look on, more coquettishly than 
live goats ever did ; but what do I care for that ? 

Are they not well drawn? Are they not sweetly 
colored? Do not the trees seem to murmur summer 
strains ? Does not the gorgeousness of the very atmo 
sphere invite the charming languor you see in his 
groups? Is it not like spending a day of summer 
stretched on the grass at St. Cloud gazing idly on 
Paris and the plain to look on one of the painted pas 
torals of Watteau? 

Are not his pictures French from corner to corner 
beguilingly French French to the very rosette that sets 
off the slipper of his shepherdess? If there are no 
such shepherdesses in nature, pray tell me, do you not 
wish there were throngs of them, lying on the hill 
sides all about you just as charming and as mischiev 
ous? 

Watteau s brooks show no mud : why should the 
feet of his fountain nymphs be made for anything but 
dancing? "Watteau s sheep are the best-behaved sheep 
in the world ; then why should his country swains look 
red in the face, or weary with their watches ? "Why 
should they do anything but sound a flageolet, or coquet 
with pretty shepherdesses who wear blue sashes, and 
rosettes in their shoes ? In short, there is a marvellous 
keeping about Watteau s pictures, whatever the critics 



EXILE ROQUE. 251 

may say of their untruth : if fictions, they are charm 
ing fictions, which, like all good fictions, woo you into a 
wish " it were true." 

But I did not set out to write critiques upon paint 
ings ; nobody reads them through when they are written. 
I have a story to tell. Poor Emile ! but I must be 
gin at the beginning. 

Liking Watteau as I do, and loving to look for ten 
minutes together into the sweet girl-face of Greuze s 
" Broken Jug," I used to loiter when I was in Paris for 
hours together in those rooms of the Louvre where the 
more recent French paintings are distributed, and where 
the sunlight streams in warmly through the south win 
dows, even in winter. Going there upon passeport days, 
I came to know, after a while, the faces of all the artists 
who busy themselves with copying those rollicking French 
masters of whom I have spoken. Nor could I fail to 
remark that the artists who chose those sunny rooms for 
their easels, and those sunny masters for their subjects, 
were far more cheerful and gay in aspect than the 
pinched and sour-looking people in the Long Gallery, 
who grubbed away at their Da Vincis, and their Sasso 
Ferrates. 

Among those who wore the joyous faces, and who 
courted the sunny atmosphere which hangs about Bou 
cher and "Watteau, I had frequent occasion to remark a 
tall, athletic young fellow, scarce four-and-twenty, who 



252 SEVEN STORIES. 

seemed to take a special delight in drawing the pretty 
shepherdesses and the well-behaved goats about which 
I was just now speaking. 

I do not think he was a great artist ; I feel quite 
sure that he never imagined it himself ; but he came to 
his work, and prepared his easel rubbing his hands 
together the while with a glee that made me sure he 
had fallen altogether into the spirit of that sunny nymph- 
world which Watteau has created. 

I have said that I thought him no great artist ; nor 
was he ; yet there was something quite remarkable in 
his copies. He did not finish well ; his coloring bore 
no approach to the noontide mellowness of the originals ; 
his figures were frequently out of drawing ; but he never 
failed to catch the expression of the faces, and to inten 
sify (if I may use the term) the joviality that belonged 
to them. He turned the courtly levity of Watteau into 
a kind of mad mirth. You could have sworn to the 
identity of the characters ; but on the canvas of the 
copyist they had grown riotous. 

What drew my attention the more was what seem 
ed to me the artist s thorough and joyful participation 
in the riot he made. After a rapid half-dozen of touches 
with his brush, he would withdraw a step or two from 
his easel, and gaze at his work with a hearty satisfac 
tion that was most cheering, even to a looker-on. His 
glance seemed to say " There I have you, little 



EMILE ROQUE. 253 

nymphs ; I have taken you out of the genteel society 
of TVatteau, and put you on my own ground, where you 
may frisk as much as you please." And he would beat 
the measure of a light polka on his pallet. 

I ought to say that this artist was a fine-looking 
fellow withal, and his handsome face, aglow with en 
thusiasm, drew away the attention of not a few lady 
visitors from the pretty Vanloos scattered around. I do 
not think he was ever disturbed by this ; I do not think 
that he tweaked his mustache, or gave himself airs in 
consequence. Yet he saw it all ; he saw everything 
and everybody ; his face wore the same open, easy, 
companionable look which belongs to the frolicking 
swains of Watteau. His freedom of manner invited 
conversation ; and on some of my frequent visits to the 
French gallery I was in the habit of passing a word or 
two with him myself. 

" You seem," said I to him one day, " to admire 
Watteau very much ? " 

" Oui, Monsieur, vous avez raison : faime les choses 
riantes, moi" 

" We have the same liking," said I. 

" Ah, vous aussi : je vous en felicite. Monsieur. 
Tenez" drawing me forward with the most naive 
manner in the world to look at a group he had just 
completed " Regardez ! n est ce pas, que ces petiies 
dames Id rient aux anges ? " 



254 SEVEN STORIES. 

I chanced to have in that time an artist friend in 
Paris De Courcy, a Provincial by birth, but one who 
had spent half his life in the capital, and who knew by 
name nearly every copyist who made his appearance at 
either of the great galleries. He was himself busy just 
then at the Luxembourg ; but I took him one day with 
me through the Louvre, and begged him to tell me who 
was the artist so enraptured with Watteau ? 

As I had conjectured, he knew, or professed to 
know, all about him. He sneered at his painting as a 
matter of course : his manner was very sketchy ; his 
trees stiff; no action in his figures ; but, after all, tol 
erably well -passablement lien for an amateur. 

He was a native of the South of France ; his name 
Emile Roque ; he was possessed of an easy fortune, 
and was about to marry, rumor said, the daughter of a 
government officer of some distinction in the Depart 
ment of Finance. 

Was there any reason why my pleasant friend of the 
sunny pictures should not be happy ? Rumor gave to 
his promised bride a handsome dot. Watteau was al 
ways open to his pencil and his humor. Bad as his 
copies might be, he enjoyed them excessively. He had 
youth and health on his side ; and might, for aught 
that appeared, extend his series of laughing nymphs 
and coquettish shepherdesses to the end of his life. 

The thought of him, or of the cheery years which 



EMILE ROQUK 255 

lay before him, came to my mind very often, as I went 
journeying shortly after, through the passes of the Alps. 
It comes to me now, as I sit by my crackling fireside in 
Xew England, with the wind howling through the pine- 
tree at the corner, and the snow lying high upon the 
ground. 

n. 

I HAD left Paris in the month of May ; I came 
back toward the end of August. The last is a 
dull month for the capital ; Parisians have not yet re 
turned from Baden, or the Pyrenees, or Dieppe. True, 
the Boulevard is always gay ; but it has its seasons of 
exceeding gayety, and latter summer is by no means one 
of them. The shopmen complain of the dulness, and 
lounge idly at their doors ; their only customers are 
passing strangers. Pretty suites of rooms are to be had 
at half the rates of autumn, or of opening spring. The 
bachelor can indulge without extravagance in apart 
ments looking upon the Madeleine. The troops of chil 
dren whom you saw in the spring-time under the lee of 
the terrace wall in the little Provence" of the Tuile- 
ries are all gone to St. Germain, or to Trouville. You 
see no more the tall caps of the Norman nurses, or the 
tight little figures of the Breton bonnes. 

It is the season of vacation at the schools ; and if 



256 SEVEN STORIES. 

you stroll by the Sorbonne, or the College of France, 
the streets have a deserted air ; and the garden of the 
Luxembourg is filled only with invalids and strolling 
soldiers. The artists even, have mostly stolen away 
from their easels in the galleries, and are studying the 
live fish women of Boulogne or the bare-ankl id shep 
herdesses of Auvergne. 

I soon found my way to all the old haunts of the 
capital. I found it easy to revive my tas^e for the 
coffee of the Rotonde, in the Palais Royal ; and easy to 
listen and laugh at Sainville and Grassot. I went, a 
few days after my return, to the always charming sa 
lons of the Louvre. The sun was hot at this season 
upon that wing of the palace where hang the pictures 
of "Watteau ; and the galleries were nearly deserted. 
In the salon where I had seen so often the beaming ad 
mirer of nymphs and shepherdesses, there wat now only 
a sharp-faced English woman, with bright erysipelas on 
nose and cheeks, working hard at a Diana of Vanloo. 

I strolled on carelessly to the cool con er room, 
serving as antechamber to the principal gallery, and 
which every visitor will remember for its great picture 
of the battle of Eylau. There are several paintings 
about the walls of this salon, which are in constant re 
quest by the copyists ; I need hardly mention that 
favorite picture of Gerard, L Amour et Psyche. There 
was a group about it now ; and in the neighborhood of 



EMILE ROQUE. 257 

this group I saw, to my surprise, my old artist acquaint 
ance of the Watteau nymphs. But a sad change had 
come over him since I saw him last. The gay humor 
that shone in his face on my spring visits to the gallery 
was gone. The openness of look which seemed to chal 
lenge regard, if not conversation, he had lost utterly. 
I was not surprised that he had deserted the smiling 
shepherdesses of Watteau. 

There was a settled and determined gloom upon his 
face, which I was sure no painted sunshine could en 
liven. He was not busy with the enamelled prettiness 
of Gerard ; far from it. His easel was beside him, but 
his eye was directed toward that fearful melo-dramatic 
painting La Meduse of Gericault. It is a horrible 
shipwreck story : a raft is floating upon an ocean waste ; 
dead bodies that may have been copied from the dissect- 
ing-halls, He on it ; a few survivors, emaciated, and 
with rigid limbs, cluster around the frail spar that 
serves as mast, and that sways with the weight of a 
tattered sail ; one athletic figure rises above this dismal 
group, and with emaciated arm held to its highest 
reach, lifts a fluttering rag ; his bloodshot eye, lighted 
with a last hope, strains over the waste of waters 
which seethe beyond him. 

It was a picture from which I had always turned 
away with a shudder. It may have truth and force ; 
but the truth is gross, and the force brutal. Yet upon 



258 SEVEN STORIES. 

this subject I found Emile Roque engaged with a fearful 
intensity. He had sketched only the principal figure of 
the dying group the athlete who beckons madly, whose 
hope is on the waste. He had copied only a fragment 
of the raft barely enough to give foothold to the 
figure ; he had not even painted the sea, but had filled 
his little canvas with a cold white monotone of color, 
like a sleeted waste in winter. 

I have already remarked the wonderful vitality 
which he gave to mirth in his frolicsome pastorals ; the 
same power was apparent here ; and he had intensified 
the despair of the wretched castaway, shaking out 
his last rag of hope, to a degree that was painful to 
look upon. 

I went near him ; but he wore no longer the old 
tokens of ready fellowship. He plainly had no wish to 
recognize, or be recognized. He was intent only upon 
wreaking some bitter thought, or some blasted hope in 
the face of that shipwrecked man. The despairing look? 
and the bloodshot eye, which he had given to his copy 
of the castaway, haunted me for days. It made that 
kind of startling impression upon my mind which I was 
sure could never be forgotten. I never think, even now, 
of that painting in the Louvre, with the cold north light 
gleaming on it, but the ghastly expression of the ship 
wrecked man as Emile Roque had rendered it in his 
C0 py starts to my mind like a phantom. I see the rag 



EMILE ROQUE. 259 

fluttering from the clenched, emaciated hand ; I see the 
pallid, pinched flesh ; I see the starting eyes, bearing 
resemblance, as it seemed to me afterward, and seems 
to me now, to those of the distracted artist. 

There was a cloud over the man ; I felt sure of 
that ; I feared what might be the end of it. My eye 
ran over the daily journals, seeking in the list of sui 
cides for the name of Emile Roque. I thought it 
would come to that. On every new visit to the Louvre 
I expected to find him gone. But he was there, assidu 
ous as ever ; refining still upon the horrors of Gericault. 

My acquaintance of the Luxembourg, De Courcy, 
who had given me all the information I possessed about 
the history and prospects of this artist, was out of the 
city ; he would not return until late in the autumn. I 
dropped a line into the Poste Restante to meet him on 
his return, as I was myself very shortly on the wing for 
Italy. I can recall perfectly the expressions in my let 
ter. After intrusting him with one or two unimportant 
commissions, I said : " By-the-by, you remember the 
jolly-looking Emile Roque, who made such a frenzy 
out of his love for Watteau and his shepherdesses, and 
who was to come into possession of a pretty wife and a 
pretty dot ? 

"Is the dot forthcoming? Before you answer, go 
and look at him again in the Louvre still ; but he has 
deserted Watte an ; he is studying and copying the hor- 



260 SEVEN STORIES. 

rors of La Meduse. It does not look like a betrothal or 
a honeymoon. If he were not an amateur, I should 
charge you to buy for me that terrible figure he is 
working up from the raft scene. The intensity he is 
putting in it is not Gericault s my word for it, it is 
his own. 

"When he is booked among the suicides (where 
your Parisian forms of madness seem to tend), send 
me the journal, and tell me what you can of the why." 

In the galleries of Florence one forgets the French 
painters utterly, and rejoices in the forgetfulness. 
Among the Carraccis and the Guides what room is there 
for the lover-like Watteau? Even Greuze, on tlie walls 
of the Pitti Palace, would be Greuze no longer. It is 
a picture-life one leads in those old cities of art, grow 
ing day by day into companionship with the masters 
and the masters subjects. 

How one hob-nobs with the weird sisters of Michael 
Angelo ! How he pants through Snyder s Boar-Hunt, 
or lapses into a poetic sympathy with the marble flock 
of Niobe ! 

Who wants letters of introduction to the " nice 
people" of Florence, when he can chat with the Forna- 
rina by the hour, and listen to Raphael s Pope Julius ? 

Yesterday I used to say to myself I spent an 
hour or two with old Gerard Douw and pretty Angelica 
Kauffman nice people, both of them. To-morrow I 



EMILE ROQUE. 261 

will pass the morning with Titian, and lunch off a plate 
of Carlo Dolci s. In such company one grows into a 
delightful : Middle-Age" feeling, in which the vanities 
of daily journals and hotel bills are forgotten. 

In tliis mood of mind, when I was hesitating, one 
day of m ! d-winter, whether I would sun myself in a 
Claude Lorraine, or between the Arno and the houses, 
the valet of the inn where I was staying, put a letter in 
my hand bearing a Paris post-mark. 

" It must be from De Courcy," said I ; and my 
fancy straightway conjured up an image of the dapper 
little man disporting among all the gayeties and the 
grisette? of a Paris world ; but I had never one thought 
of poor Eniile Roque, until I caught sight of his name 
within the letter. 

After acquitting himself of the sundry commissions 
left in his keeping, De Courcy says : 

" You were half right and half \vrong about the 
jolly artkt of Watteau. His suicide is not in the jour 
nals, but for all that it may be. I had no chance of 
seeing him at his new game in the comer salon, for the 
bird had nown before my return. I heard, though, very 
much of his strange copy of the crowning horror of 
Ge ricault. Nor would you have been the only one in 
the market as purchaser of his extravaganza. A droll 
story is told of an English visitor who was startled one 
day by, 1 dare say, the same qualities which you dis- 



262 SEVEN 8TORIE8. 

covered in the copy ; but the Briton, with none of your 
scruples, addressed himself, in the best way he could, to 
the artist himself, requesting him to set a price upon his 
work. 

" The old Emile Roque whom I had known in 
fact, whom we had known together would have met 
such a question with the gayest and most gallant refusal 
possible. 

" But what did this bewitched admirer of Gericault 
do? 

" He kept at his work doggedly, gloomily. 

" The Englishman stubbornly renewed his inquiry 
this time placing his hand upon the canvas, to aid his 
solicitation by so much of pantomime. 

" The painter (you remember his stalwart figure) 
brushed the stranger s hand aside, and with a petrifying 
look and great energy of expression (as if the poor 
Briton had been laying his hand on his very heart), 
said : C est d moi, Monsieur a moi a moi ! beating 
his hand on his breast the while. 

" Poor Emile ! The jovial times of "VVatteau s 
nymphs are, I fear, gone forever. 

" But I forget to tell you what I chiefly had in mind 
when I began this mention of him. Some say his love 
has crazed him some say no. The truth is, he is not 

to marry the pretty Virginie C , one time his 

affianced. 



EMILE ROQUE. 263 

" There are objections. Rumor says they come 

from Monsieur C , sows chef in the office of Finance, 

and father of Yirginie ; and rumor adds that the objec 
tions are insurmountable. What they are, Heaven only 
knows. Surely a daintier fellow never sued for favor ; 
and as for scandal, Emile Roque was what you call, I 
believe, a Puritan." [I do not think it necessary to 
correct De Courcy s strange use of an English term.] 

"The oddest thing of all I have yet to tell you. 
This broken hope diverted Emile from Watteau to the 
corner salon of the Louvre ; at least I infer as much, 
since the two events agree in time. It is evident, fur 
thermore, that the poor fellow takes the matter bitterly 
to heart ; and it is perfectly certain that all the objec 
tion rests with the father of the fiancee. 

" So far, nothing strange ; but notwithstanding this 

opposition on the part of Monsieur C , it is known 

that Emile was in constant and familiar, nay, friendly 
communication with him up to the time of his disap 
pearance from the capital, which occurred about the 
date of my return. 

" Read me this riddle if you can ! Is the rendering 
of the horrors of Gericault to restore Emile to favor? 
Or shall I, as you prophesied four months ago (ample 
time for such consummation) , still look for his enroll 
ment among the suicides ? " 

With this letter in my hand (there were others in 



264 SEVEN STORIES. 

my heart), I gave up for that day the noontides of 
Claude, and sunned myself instead along the Arno. 
Beyond the houses which hang on the further bank of 
the river, I could see the windows of the Pitti Palace 
and the cypresses of theBoboli gardens, and above both, 
the blue sky which arched over the tower of Galileo 
upon the distant hills. I wished the distracted painter 
might have been there on the sunny side of the houses, 
which were full of memories of Angelo and Cellini, to 
forget his troubles. If an unwilling father were all, 
there might be no suicide. Still, the expression in his 
copy of the castaway haunted me. 



in. 



WHY should I go on to speak of pictures here 
except that I love them ? Why should I re 
call the disgusting and wonderful old men and women 
of Denner, which hang with glass over them, within 
the window bays of the palace of Belvidere at Vienna? 
Why should my fancy go stalking through that great 
Rubens Museum, with its red arms,* fat bosoms, pin 
cushion cheeks, and golden hair ? 

Why does my thought whisk away to that gorgeous 
salon of Dresden, where hangs the greatest of all Ra 
phael s Madonnas ? 



EMILE ROQUK 265 

The face of the Virgin is all that makes perfection 
in female beauty ; it is modest, it is tender, it is intelli 
gent. The eyes are living eyes, but with no touch of 
earthiness, save the shade of care which earth s sorrows 
give even to the Holy Virgin. She wears the dignity 
of the mother of Christ, with nothing of severity to re 
pulse ; she wears the youthful innocence of the spouse 
of David, with no touch of levity ; she wears the modest 
bearing of one whose child was nursed in a manger, 
with the presence of one " chosen from among women." 
She is mounting on clouds to heaven ; light as an angel, 
but with no wings ; her divinity sustains her. In her 
arms she holds lightly but firmly the infant Jesus, who 
has the face of a true child, with something else beyond 
humanity ; his eye has a little of the look of a frighted 
boy in some strange situation, where he knows he is 
safe, and where yet he trembles. His light, silky hair 
is strewn by a wind (you feel it like a balm) over a 
brow beaming with soul ; he looks deserving the adora 
tion the shepherds gave him ; and there is that in his 
manner, innocent as the babe he was in his look, 
Divine as the God he was, which makes one see in the 

child * 

" the father of the man." 

Pope Sixtus is lifting his venerable face in adoration 
from below ; and opposite, Saint Barbara, beautiful and 
modest, has dropped her eyes, though religious awe and 
12 



266 SEVEN STORIES. 

love are beaming in her looks. Still lower, and lifting 
their heads and their little wings only above the edge 
of the picture, are two cherubs, who are only less in 
beauty than the Christ ; they are twins but they are 
twin angels and Christ is God. 

The radiance in their faces is, I think, the most 
wonderful thing I have ever seen in painting. They are 
listening to the celestial harmony which attends the 
triumph of the Virgin. These six faces make up the 
picture ; the Jesus, a type of divinity itself; the Virgin, 
the purity of earth, as at the beginning, yet humble, 
because of earth ; the cherubs, the purity of heaven, con 
scious of its high estate ; the two saints, earth made 
pure and sanctified by Christ half doubting, yet full 
of hope. 

I wrote thus much in my note-book, as I stood be 
fore the picture in that room of the Royal Gallery which 
looks down upon the market-place of Dresden ; and with 
the painting lingering in my thought more holily than 
sermons of a Sunday noontime, I strolled over the mar 
ket-place, crossed the long bridge which spans the Elbe, 
and wandered up the banks of the river as far as the 
Findlater Gardens. The terrace is dotted over with 
tables and benches, where one may sit over his coffee 
or ice, and enjoy a magnificent view of Dresden, the 
river, the bridge, and the green battle-field where Mo- 
reau fell. It was a mild day of winter, and I sat there 



EXILE ROQUE. 267 

enjoying the prospect, sipping at a demi-tasse, and casting 
my eye from time to time over an old number of the 
Debats newspaper, which the waiter had placed upon 
my table. 

When there is no political news of importance stir 
ring, I was always in the habit of running over the 
column of Faits Divers : " Different Things" translates 
it, but does not give a good idea of the piquancy which 
usually belongs to that column. The suicides are all 
there ; the extraordinary robberies are there ; impor 
tant discoveries are entered ; and all the bits of scandal, 
which, of course, everybody reads and everybody says 
should never have been published. 

In the journal under my hand there was mention of 
two murders, one of them of that stereotype class grow 
ing out of a drunken brawl, which the world seems to 
regard indifferently, as furnishing the needed punctua 
tion-marks in the history of civilization. The other 
drew my attention very closely. 

The Count de Roquefort, an elderly gentleman of 
wealth and distinguished family, residing in a chateau a 
little off the high road leading from Nismes to Avignon, 
in the South of France, had been brutally murdered in 
his own house. The Count was unmarried ; none of 
his family connection resided with him, and aside from 
a considerable retinue of servants, he lived quite alone- 
devoted, as was said, to scientific pursuits. 



268 SEVEN STORIES. 

It appeared that two days before his assassination 
he was visited by a young man, a stranger in that re 
gion, who was received (the servants testified) kindly 
by the Count, and who passed two hours closeted with 
him in his library. On the day of the murder the same 
young man was announced ; his manner was excited, 
and he was ushered, by the Count s order, into the 
library, as before. 

It would seem, however, that the Count had anti 
cipated the possibility of some trouble, since he had 
secured the presence of two "officers of the peace" in 
his room. It was evident that the visitor had come by 
appointment. The officers were concealed under the 
hangings of a bay-window at the end of the library, 
with orders from the Count not to act, unless they should 
see signs of violence. 

The young man, on entering, advanced toward the 
table beside which the Count was seated, reading. He 
raised his head at the visitor s entrance, and beckoned 
to a chair. 

The stranger approached more nearly, and without 
seating himself, addressed the Count in a firm tone of 
voice to this effect : 

" I have come to ask, Monsieur le Comte, if you are 
prepared to accept the propositions I made to you two 
days ago ? " 

The Count seemed to hesitate for a moment ; but 



EMILE ROQUE. 269 

only, it appeared, from hearing some noise in the ser 
vants hall below. 

The visitor appeared excited by his calmness, and 
added, " I remind you, for the last time, of the vow I 
have sworn to accomplish if you refuse my demand." 

" I do refuse," said the Count, firmly. "It is a 
ras h 

It was the last word upon his lips ; for before the 
officers could interfere, the visitor had drawn a pistol 
from his breast and discharged it at the head of the 
Count. The ball entered the brain. The Count lin 
gered for two hours after, but showed no signs of con 
sciousness. 

The assassin, who was promptly arrested, is a stal 
wart man of about thirty, and from the contents of his 
portmanteau, which he had left at the inn of an adjoin 
ing village, it is presumed that he followed the profession 
of an artist. 

The cause of the murder is still a mystery ; the 
Count had communicated nothing to throw light upon it. 
He was a kind master, and was not known to have an 
enemy in the world. 

I had read this account with that eager curiosity 
with which I believe all even the most sensitive and 
delicate unwittingly devour narratives of that kind ; I 
had finished my half-cup of coffee, and was conjecturing 
what could possibly be the motive for such a murder, 



2 70 SE YEN STORIES. 

and what the relations between the Count and the 
strange visitor, when suddenly like a flash the con 
viction fastened itself upon me, that the murderer was 
none other than Emile Roque ! 

I did not even think in that moment of the remote 
similarity in the two names Roque and De Roquefort. 
For anything suggestive that lay in it, the name might 
as well have been De Montfort or De Courcy ; I am 
quite sure of that. 

Indeed, no association of ideas, no deduction from 
the facts named, led me to the conclusion which I formed 
on the spur of the moment. Yet my conviction was as 
strong as my own consciousness. I knew Emile Roque 
was the murderer ; I remembered it ; for I remembered 
his copy of the head of the castaway in Gericault s 
Wreck of the Medusa ! 

When I had hazarded the conjecture of suicide, I 
had reasoned loosely from the changed appearance of 
the man, and from the suicidal tendency of the Paris 
form of madness. Now I reasoned, not from the ap 
pearance of the man at all, but from my recollection of 
his painting. 

There is no resignation in the face of Gericault s 
shipwrecked man ; there is only animal fear and de 
spair, lighted with but one small ray of hope. The ties 
of humanity exist no longer for him ; whatever was 
near or dear is forgotten in that supreme moment when 



EM1LE ROQUE. 271 

the animal instinct of self-preservation at once brutalizes 
and vitalizes every faculty. 

Such is Gericault s picture ; but Roque had added 
the intensity of moral despair : he had foreshadowed 
the tempest of a soul tossed on a waste not of ocean 
but of doubt, hate, crime ! I felt sure that he had un 
wittingly foretokened his own destiny. 

Are there not moments in the lives of all of us 
supreme moments when we have the power lent us to 
wreak in language, or on canvas, or in some wild burst 
of music (as our habit of expression may lie), all our 
capabilities, and to typify, by one effort of the soul, all 
the issues of our life ? I knew now that Einile Roque 
had unwittingly done this in his head from the Medusa. 
I knew that the period was to occur in his life when his 
own thought and action would illustrate to the full all 
the wildness and the despair to which he had already 
given pictured expression. I cannot tell how I knew 
this, any more than I can tell how I knew that he was 
the murderer. 

I wrote De Courcy that very day, referring him to 
the paragraph I had read, and adding: " this artist is 
Emile Roque, but who is the Count de Roquefort ?" 
It occasioned me no surprise to hear from him only two 
days after (his letter having crossed mine on the way), 
that the fact of Roque s identity with the culprit was 
fully confirmed. And De Ctfurcy added : "It is not a 



272 SEVEN STORIES. 

suicide now, but, I fear, the guillotine. How frightful ! 
Who could believe it of the man we saw rioting among 
the nymphs of Watteau? " 



IV. 



I RETURNED to Paris by the way of Belgium. 
I think it was in the Hotel de Saxe, of Brussels, 
where I first happened upon a budget of French papers 
which contained a report of the trial of poor Roque. 
It was a hopeless case with him ; every one foresaw 
that. For a time I do not think there was any sympa 
thy felt for him. The testimony all went to show the 
harmless and benevolent character of the murdered 
Count. The culprit had appeared to all who saw him 
within the year past, of a morose and harsh disposition. 

I say that for a time sympathy was with the mur 
dered man ; but certain circumstances came to light to 
ward the close of the trial, and indeed after it was over, 
and the poor fellow s fate was fixed, which gave a new 
turn to popular feeling. 

These circumstances had a special interest for me, 
inasmuch as they cleared up the mystery which had be 
longed to his change of manner in the galleries of the 
Louvre, and to his relations with the Count de Roquefort. 

I will try and state "these circumstances as they 



EMILE ROQUE. 273 

came to my knowledge through the newspaper reports 
of that date. 

In the first place, the Count, after the visit of 
Emile Roque, had communicated to those in his confi 
dence nothing respecting the nature or the objects of 
that visit ; and this, notwithstanding he had such reason 
to apprehend violence on its repetition, that he had se 
cured the presence of two officers to arrest the offensive 
person. To these officers he had simply communicated 
the fact of his expecting a visit from an unknown indi 
vidual, who had threatened him with personal violence. 

The officers were quite sure that the Count had 
spoken of the criminal as a stranger to him ; indeed, he 
seemed eager to convey to them the idea that he had no 
previous knowledge whatever of the individual who so 
causelessly threatened his peace. 

Nothing was found among the Count s papers to for 
bid the truthfulness of his assertion on this point ; no 
letter could be discovered from any person bearing that 
name. 

The mother of the prisoner, upon learning the ac 
cusation urged against him, had become incapacitated 
by a severe paralytic attack, from appearing as a wit 
ness, or from giving any intelligible information what 
ever. She had said only, in the paroxysm of her dis 
tress, and before her faculties were withered by the 
shock : " Lui aussi ! 11 s y perd ! " 
12* 



274 SEVEN STORIES. 

Not one of the companions of Emile Roque (and he 
had many in his jovial days) had ever heard him speak 
of the Count de Roquefort. Up to the time of his depar 
ture for the South, he had communicated to no one his 
intentions, or even his destination. His old friends had, 
indeed, remarked the late change in his manner, and 
had attributed it solely to what they supposed a bitter 
disappointment in relation to his proposed marriage 
with Virginie C . 

I have already alluded (through a letter from De 
Courcy) to the singular fact, that Emile Roque continued 

his familiarity and intimacy with Monsieur C long 

after the date of the change in his appearance, and even 
up to the time of his departure for the South. It was 

naturally supposed that Monsieur C would prove 

an important witness in the case. His testimony, how 
ever, so far from throwing light upon the crime, only 
doubled the mystery attaching to the prisoner s fate. 

He spoke in the highest terms of the character which 
the criminal had always sustained. He confirmed the 
rumors which had coupled ,his name with that of a 
member of his own family. The marriage between the 
parties had been determined upon with his full consent, 
and only waited the final legal forms usual in such cases 
for its accomplishment, when it was deferred in obedi 
ence to the wishes- of only M. Roque himself ! 

The witness regarded this as a caprice at the first ; 






EMILE ROQUE. 275 

but the sudden change in the manner of the criminal 
from that time, had satisfied him that some secret anxiety 
was weighing on his mind. His high regard for the 
character of M. Roque prompted (and that alone 
had prompted) a continuance of intimacy with him, and 
a vain repetition of endeavors to win from him some ex 
planation of his changed manner. 

One fact more, which seemed to have special signifi 
cance in its bearing upon the crime, was this ; in the 
pocket of the prisoner at the time of his seizure was found 
a letter purporting to be from the murdered Count, and 
addressed to a certain Amedte Brune. It was a tender 
letter, full of expressions of devotion, and promising that 
upon a day not very far distant, the writer would meet 
his fair one, and they should be joined together, for woe 
or for weal, thenceforth, through life. 

The letter was of an old date thirty odd years ago 
it had been written ; and on comparison with the man 
uscript of the Count of that date, gave evidence of au 
thenticity. "WTio this Amedee Brune might be, or what 
relation she bore to the criminal, or how the letter came 
into his possession, none could tell. Those who had been 
early acquaintances of the Count had never so much as 
heard a mention of that name. A few went so far as to 
doubt the genuineness of his signature. He had been a 
man remarkable for his quiet and studious habits. So 
far as the knowledge of his friends extended, no passing 
gallantries had ever relieved the monotony of his life. 



276 SEVEN STORIES. 

The accused, in the progress of the inquiries which 
had elicited these facts, had maintained a dogged silence, 
not communicating any statement of importance even to 
his legal advisers. The sudden illness which had befal 
len his mother, and which threatened a fatal termi 
nation, seemed to have done more to prostrate his hope 
and courage than the weight of the criminal accusa 
tion. 

The fiancee, meantime, Mademoiselle C , was, 

it seems, least of all interested in the fate of the prisoner. 
Whether incensed by his change of manner, or stung by 
jealousy, it was certain that before this accusation had 
been urged she had conceived against him a strong an 
tipathy. 

Such was the state of facts developed on the trial. 
The jury found him guilty of murder ; there were no ex 
tenuating circumstances, and there was no recommen 
dation to mercy. 

After the condemnation the criminal had grown more 
communicative. Something of the reckless gayety of 
his old days had returned for a time. He amused him 
self with sketching from memory some of the heads of 
Watte au s nymphs upon his prison walls. His mother 
had died, fortunately, only a few days after the render 
ing of the verdict, without knowing, however, what fate 
was to befal her son. 

It was rumored that when this event was made 



EMILE ROQUE. 277 

known to him he gave way to passionate tears, and send 
ing for the priest, made a full confession of his crime 
and its causes. This confession had occasioned that turn 
in popular sympathy of which I have spoken. The 
friends of the Count, however, and even the prisoner s 
own legal advisers (as I was told) , regarded it as only an 
ingenious appeal for mercy. 

For myself, notwithstanding the lack of positive evi 
dence to sustain his statements, I have been always in 
clined to believe his story a true one. 

The main points in his confession were these : He 

had loved Virginie C , as she had not deserved to be 

loved. He was happy ; he had fortune, health, every 
thing to insure content. Monsieur C welcomed 

him to his family. His mother rejoiced in the cheer 
fulness and sunny prospects of her only child. His 
father (he knew it only from his mother s lips) had been 
a general in the wars of Napoleon, and had died before 
his recollection. 

He had been little concerned to inquire regarding the 
character or standing of his father, until, as the marriage 
day approached, it became necessary to secure legal tes 
timonials respecting his patrimony and name. 

No general by the name of Roque had ever served in 
the wars of Napoleon or in the armies of France ! For 
the first time the laughing dream of his life was disturbed. 
With his heart full, and his brain on fire, he appealed to 



278 SEVEN STORIES. 

his mother for explanation. She had none to give. 
Amidst tears and sobs, the truth was wrung from her, 
that he the gay-hearted Emile, whose life was full of 
promise could claim no legal parentage. But the man 
who had so wronged both him and herself was still alive ; 
and, with the weakness of her sex, she assured him that 
he was of noble birth, and had never shown tenderness 
toward any woman save herself. 

Who was this noble father, on whose riches the son 
was living? No entreaties or threats could win this secret 
from the mother. 

Then it was that the change had come over the 
character of Emile ; then it was that he had deserted 
the smiling nymphs of Watteau for the despairing cast- 
aAvay of Gericault. Too proud to bring a tarnished es 
cutcheon to his marriage rites ; doubting if that stain 
would not cause both father and daughter to relent, he 
had himself urged the postponement of the legal arrange 
ments. One slight hope slighter than that belonging to 
the castaway of the wrecked Medusa sustained him. 
The mother (she avowed it with tears and with grief) 
had become such only under solemn promise of marriage 
from one she had never doubted. 

To find this recreant father was now the aim of the 
crazed life of Emile. With this frail hope electrifying 
his despair, he pushed his inquiries secretly in every quar 
ter, and solaced his thought with his impassioned work 
in the corner salon of the Louvre. 



EM1LE ROQUE. 279 

In the chamber of his mother was a little escritoire, 
kept always closed and locked. His suspicions, after a 
time, attached themselves there. He broke the fasten 
ings, and found within a miniature, a lock of hair, a 
packet of letters, signed De Roquefort. Of these last 
he kept only one ; the others he destroyed as so many to 
kens of his shame. 

That fatal one he bore with him away from Paris, 
out from the influence of his mother. He pushed his 
inquiries with the insidious cunning of a man crazed by 
a single thought. He found at length the real address 
of the Count de Roquefort. He hurried to his pres 
ence, bearing always with him the letter of promise, so 
ruthlessly broken. 

The Count was startled by his appearance, and 
startled still more by the wildness of his story and of 
his demands. The son asked the father to make good, 
at this late day, the promise of his youth. The Count 
replied evasively ; he promised to assist the claimant 
with money, and with his influence, and would engage 
to make him heir to the larger part of his fortune. 

All this fell coldly upon the ear of the excited Emile. 
He wished restitution to his mother. Nothing less 
could be listened to. 

The Count urged the scandal which would grow out 
of such a measure ; with his years and reputation, he 
could not think of exposing himself to the ribald tongues 



280 SEVEN STORIES. 

of the world. Moreover, the publicity which must 
necessarily belong to the marriage would, he consider 
ed, be of serious injury to Emile himself. The fact of 
his illegitimacy was unknown ; the old relation of his 
mother to himself was a secret one ; the obstacles which 
might now lie in the way of his own marriage to Vir- 

ginie C were hardly worth consideration, when 

c6mpared with the inconvenience which would follow a 
public exposure of the circumstances. He set before 
Emile the immense advantages of the fortune which he 
would secure to him on his (the Count s) death, provid 
ed only he was content to forbear his urgence as re 
garded his mother. 

Emile listened coldly, calmly. There was but one 
thought in his mind only one hope ; there must be 
restitution to his mother, or he would take justice in his 
own hands. The Count must make good his promise, 
or the consequences would be fatal. He gave the Count 
two days for reflection. 

At the end of that time he returned, prepared for 
any emergency. The Count had utterly refused him 
justice : he had uttered his own death-warrant. 

His mother was no longer living, to feel the sting of 
the exposure. For himself, he had done all in his pow-. 
er to make her name good : he had no ties to the world ; 
he was ready for the worst. 

Such was the relation of Emile ; and there was a 



EMILE ROQUR 281 

coherency about it, and an agreement with the main 
facts established by evidence, which gave it an air of 
great probability. 

But, on the other hand, it was alleged by the friends 
of the Count that such a relation on his part never could 
have existed ; that not the slightest evidence of it could 
be found among his papers, nor did the recollection of 
his oldest friends offer the smallest confirmation. The 
reported conversations of Emile with the Count were, 
they contended, only an ingenious fiction. 

Singularly enough, there was nothing among the 
effects of the deceased Madame Roque to confirm the al 
legation that she had ever borne the name of Amedee 
Brune. She had been known only to her oldest ac 
quaintances of the capital as Madame Roque : of her 
previous history nothing could be ascertained. 

The solitary exclamation of that lady, " II s yperd ! " 
was instanced as proof that Emile was laboring under a 
grievous delusion. 

Notwithstanding this, my own impression was that 
Emile had executed savage justice upon the betrayer 
of his mother. 



282 SEVEN STORIES. 



V. 



ON the month of March a very cold month in 
that year I had returned to Paris, and taken 
up my old quarters in a hotel garni of the Rue des 
Beaux-Arts. 

Any public interest or curiosity which had belonged 
to the trial and story of Emile Roque had passed away. 
French journalists do not keep alive an interest of that 
sort by any reports upon the condition of the prisoner. 
They barely announce the execution of his sentence upon 
the succeeding day. I had, by accident only, heard of 
his occasional occupation in sketching the heads of 
some of Watteau s nymphs upon the walls of his cell. 
I could scarce believe this of him. It seemed to me 
that his fancy would run rather in the direction of the 
horrors of Gericault. 

I felt an irresistible desire to see him once again. 
There was no hope of this, except I should be present 
at his execution. I had never witnessed an execution ; 
had never cared to witness one. But I wished to look 
once more on the face of Emile Roque. 

The executions in Paris take place without public 
announcement, and usually at daybreak, upon the 
square fronting the great prison of La Eoquette. No 
order is issued until a late hour on the preceding even- 



EXILE ROQUE. 283 

ing, when the state executioner is directed to have the 
guillotine brought at midnight to the prison square, and 
a corps of soldiery is detailed for special service (un- 
mentioned) in that quarter of the city. My only chance 
of witnessing the scene was in arranging with one of 
the small wine-merchants, who keep open house in that 
neighborhood until after midnight, to dispatch a messen 
ger to me whenever he should gee preparations com 
menced. 

This arrangement I effected ; and on the 22d of 
March I was roused from sleep at a little before one in 
the morning by a bearded man, who had felt his way 
up the long flight of stairs to my rooms, and informed 
me that the guillotine had arrived before the prison of 
Roquette. 

My thought flashed on the instant to the figure of 
Emile as I had seen him before the shepherdesses of 
Watteau as I had seen him before the picture of the 
Shipwreck. I dressed hurriedly, and groped my way 
below. The night was dark and excessively cold. A 
little sleet had fallen, which crumpled under my feet as 
I made my way toward the quay. Arrived there, not 
a cab was to be found at the usual stand ; so I pushed 
on across the river, and under the archway of the pal 
ace of the Louvre, casting my eye toward that wing of 
the great building where I had first seen the face which 
I was shortly to look on for the last time on earth. 



284 SEVEN STORIES. 

Finding no cabs in the square before the palace, I 
went on through the dark streets of St. Anne and 
Grammont, until I reached the Boulevard. A few voi- 
tures de remise were opposite the Cafe Foy. I appeal 
ed to the drivers of two of them in vain, and only suc 
ceeded by a bribe in inducing a third to drive me to the 
Place de la Eoquette. It is a long way from the centre 
of Paris, under the shadow almost of Pere la Chaise. I 
tried to keep some reckoning of the streets through 
which we passed, but I could not. Sometimes my eye 
fell upon what seemed a familiar corner, but in a moment 
all was strange again. The lamps appeared to me 
to burn dimly ; the houses along the way grew 
smaller and smaller. From time to time, I saw a wine 
shop still open ; but not a soul was moving on the 
streets with the exception of, here and there, a brace of 
sergents de ville. At length we seemed to have passed 
out of the range even of the city patrol, and I was be 
ginning to entertain very unpleasant suspicions of the 
cabman, and of the quarter into which he might be tak 
ing me at that dismal hour of the night, when he drew 
up his horse before a little wine-shop, which I soon 
recognized as the one where I had left my order for the 
dispatch of the night s messenger. 

I knew now that the guillotine was near. 

As I alighted I could see, away to my right, the dim 
outline of the prison looming against the night sky, with 



EXILE ROQUE. 285 

not a single light in its gratings. The broad square be 
fore it was sheeted over with sleet, and the leafless trees 
that girdled it round stood ghost-like in the snow. 
Through the branches, and not far from the prison gates, 
I could see, in the gray light (for it was now hard upon 
three o clock), a knot of persons collected around a 
frame-work of timber, which I knew must be the guil 
lotine. 

I made my way there, the frozen surface crumpling 
under my steps. The workmen had just finished their 
arrangements. Two of the city police were there, to 
preserve order, and to prevent too near an approach of 
the loiterers from the wine-shops who may have been, 
perhaps, at this hour, a dozen in number. 

I could pass near enough to observe fully the con 
struction of the machine. There was, first, a broad 
platform, perhaps fifteen feet square, supported by mov 
able tressle-work, and elevated some six or seven feet 
from the ground. A flight of plank steps led up to this, 
broad enough for three to walk upon abreast. Immedi 
ately before the centre of these steps, upon the platform, 
was stretched what seemed a trough of plank ; and from 
the farther end of this trough rose two strong uprights 
of timber, perhaps ten feet in height. These were con 
nected at the top by a slight frame-work ; and immedi 
ately below this, by the light of a solitary street lamp 
which flickered near by, I could see the glistening of the 



286 SEVEN STORIES. 

knife. Beside the trough-like box was placed a long 
willow basket : its shape explained to me its purpose. 
At the end of the trough, and beyond the upright tim 
bers, was placed a tub : with a shudder, I recognized 
its purpose also. 

The prison gates were only a few rods distant from 
the steps to the scaffold, and directly opposite them. 
They were still closed and dark. 

The execution, I learned, was to take place at six. 
A few loiterers, mostly in blouses, came up from time 
to time to join the group about the scaffold. 

By four o clock there was the sound of tramping 
feet, one or two quick words of command, and present 
ly a battalion of the Municipal Guard, without drum 
beat, marched in at the lower extremity of the square, 
approached the scaffold, and having stacked their arms, 
loitered with the rest. 

Lights now began to appear at the windows of the 
prison. A new corps of police came up and cleared a 
wider space around the guillotine. A cold gray light 
stole slowly over the eastern sky. 

By five o clock the battalion of the Guards had form 
ed a hedge of bayonets from either side of the prison 
doors, extending beyond and inclosing the scaffold. A 
squadron of mounted men had also come upon the 
ground, and was drawn up in line, a short distance on 
one side. Two officials appeared now upon the scaf- 



EMILE ROQUE. 287 

fold, and gave trial to the knife. They let slip the cord 
or chain which held it to its place, and the knife fell 
with a quick, sharp clang, that I thought must have 
reached to ears within the walls of the prison. Twice 
more they made their trial, and twice more I heard the 
clang. 

Meantime people were gathering. Market-women 
bound for the city lingered at sight of the unusual spec 
tacle, and a hundred or more soldiers from a neighbor 
ing barrack had now joined the crowd of lookers-on. A 
few women from the near houses had brought their 
children ; and a half-dozen boys had climbed into the 
trees for a better view. 

At intervals, from the position which I held, I could 
see the prison doors open for a moment, and the light 
of a lantern within, as some officer passed in or out. 

I remember that I stamped the ground petulantly 
it was so cold. Again and again I looked at my watch. 

Fifteen minutes to six ! 

It was fairly daylight now, though the morning was 
dark and cloudy, and a fine, searching mist was in the 
air. 

A man in blouse placed a bag of saw-dust at the 
foot of the gallows. The crowd must have now num 
bered a thousand. An old market-woman stood next 
me. She saw me look at my watch, and asked the 
hour. 



288 SEVEN STORIES. 

" Eight minutes to six." 

" Mon Dieu ; huit minutes encore ! " She was eager 
for the end. 

I could have counted time now by the beating of my 
heart. 

What was Emile Roque doing within those doors ? 
praying? struggling? was the face of the castaway on 
him ? I could not separate him now from that fearful 
picture ; I was straining my vision to catch a glimpse 
not of Emile Roque but of the living counterpart of 
that terrible expression which he had wrought wild, 
aimless despair. 

Two minutes of six. 

I saw a hasty rush of men to the parapet that topped 
the prison wall ; they leaned there, looking over. 

I saw a stir about the prison gates, and both were 
flung wide open. 

There was a suppressed murmur around me " Le 
void ! Le void I" I saw him coming forward between 
two officers ; he wore no coat or waistcoat, and his shirt 
was rolled back from his throat ; his arms were pin 
ioned behind him ; his bared neck was exposed to the 
frosty March air ; his face was pale deathly pale, yet 
it was calm ; I recognized not the castaway, but the 
mail Emile Roque. 

There was a moment between the prison gates and 
the foot of the scaffold ; he kissed the crucifix, which a 



EMILE ROQUK 289 

priest handed him, and mounted with a firm step. I 
know not how, but in an instant he seemed to fall, his 
head toward the knife under the knife. 

My eyes fell. I heard the old woman beside me 
say passionately, " Mon Dieu! il ne veut pas I" 

I looked toward the scaffold ; at that supreme mo 
ment the brute instinct in him had rallied for a last 
struggle. Pinioned as he was, he had lifted up his 
brawny shoulders and withdrawn his neck from the fa 
tal opening. Now indeed, his face wore the terrible 
expression of the picture. Hate, fear, madness, despair, 
were blended in his look. 

But the men mastered him ; they thrust him down ; 
I could see him writhe vainly. My eyes fell again. 

I heard a clang a thud ! 

There was a movement in the throng around me. 
When I looked next at the scaffold, a man in blouse 
was sprinkling saw-dust here and there. Two others 
were lifting the long willow basket into a covered cart. 
I could see now that the guillotine was painted of a dull 
red color, so that no blood stains would show. 

I moved away with the throng, the sleet crumpling 
under my feet. 

I could eat nothing that day. I could not sleep on 
the following night. 

The bloodshot eyes and haggard look of the picture 
13 



290 SEVEN STORIES. 

which had at the last as I felt it would be be en made 
real in the man, haunted me. 

I never go now to the gallery of the Louvre but I 
shun the painting of the wrecked Medusa as I would 
shun a pestilence. 



THE ATTIC: 



UNDER THE ROOF. 



THE ATTIC: 



Under the Eoof. 

I CANNOT but think it very odd the distinctness 
with which I remember the little speech which the 
head-master of our school made to us boys/ on a Novem 
ber morning just after prayer-time twenty-odd years 
ago ! He gave an authoritative rap with the end of his 
ruler upon the desk glared about the room a moment, 
through his spectacles, as if to awe us into a due atti 
tude of attention, and then spoke in this wise ; " Those 
boys who sleep in the attic (a long pause here,) should 
understand that they are expected to conduct themselves 
like gentlemen, and set a proper example to the rest of 
the school. (I think he singled out Judkins and Barton 
here, with a sharp look over the rim of his glasses.) 
Last night I am very sorry to say there was great dis 
order. Several large field-pumpkins (a very percep- 



294 SEVEN STORIES. 

tible titter here along the benches, which the head-mas 
ter represses by a rat-tak-tat from the ruler) several 
large field-pumpkins were rolled through the corridor at 
a late hour of the night, and finally were tumbled down 
the attic stairs disturbing the sleep of the quiet boys, 
and alarming the household. I hope the conduct will 
not be repeated." 

As I had not at that day been promoted to the attic, 
but classed myself with the quiet ones whose sleep had 
been disturbed, I listened with a good deal of modest 
coolness to this speech : indeed the master, as he step 
ped down from the platform, patted me approvingly on 
the head (I being conveniently posted to receive that 
mark of regard), and I could not but reproach myself 
thereupon, for the glee with which I, in company with a 
few others who were in the secret, had listened for the 
bowling pumpkins as they came bounding down the 
stairs the night before. 

The real culprits of the attic, however, were Jud- 
kins, Barton and Russel ; and I looked upon these ring 
leaders, I remember, with a good deal of awe wonder 
ing if their misdeeds and great daring would not some 
day bring them to the penitentiary. 

I am happy to say, however, that they have thus far 
escaped : One of them, Russel, is indeed an active poli 
tician ; but the others are quite safe. Judkins, who 
leered in such a way that morning at his chum, as I 



UNDER THE ROOF. 295 

thought the very height of youthful address and villainy, 
is now the stout rector of a flourishing church some 
where in one of the Middle States ; and wears, I am 
told the most dignified figure in his gown of any 
clergyman of his Diocese. 

Barton I had neither seen nor heard of in many 
years. He was of British parentage, and there was a 
rumor that at his father s death, which occurred shortly 
after those school-days to which I have referred, he had 
gone back with his mother, to the old country. Wheth 
er the rumor was well founded or not, I probably never 
should have been informed, had it not been for certain 
incidents hinted at under mention of " my old school 
mate of the Attic," in the little fat English note-book 
spoken of in the opening chapters, and which is just 
now lying under my hand. I will try to group those 
incidents together carefully enough to make a half-story 
if nothing more. 

I was bowling down through Devonshire upon a 
coach top it was before the time of the South Devon 
rail-way somewhere between Exeter and Totness, 
when my attention was arrested by a rubicund-faced 
man sitting behind me, and who wore a communicative 
ness of look, which anywhere in England, it is quite 
refreshing and startling to behold. I fell speedily into 
conversation with him, and at almost every word de 
tected traces of a voice I had some day listened to before ; 



296 SEVEN STORIES. 

they were traces of the old boy of the attic. An allu 
sion or two to other-side matters most of all the nam 
ing of the little village where the great school crowned 
the hill opened his memory like a book. It was Bar 
ton himself. Having been one of the junior boys, my 
own face was not so familiar to him ; for a pretty long 
period in life we study only the faces before us ; but 
when members of the younger ranks begin to crowd us, 
we look back with some scrutiny to find what manner 
of men they are. 

Howbeit we fell now into most easy and familiar 
chat ; we went back to the days of ; taw* and roundabouts 
as easily as a cloud drifts. I think our companions of 
the coach top must have been immensely mystified by 
our talk about the "Principal" and his daughters and 
his sons one of whom was the pattern of all mischief. 
How we roared that day as we compared recollections 
about the plethoric, thick-set, irascible farmer whose 
orchard lay unfortunately contiguous to the play-ground ! 
How we probed the mysteries of the smoky, reeking 
kitchen and brought up to light the old chef de cuisine 
(poor woman, she is dead this many a day) with her 
top-knot curls and her flying cap-strings ! And I am 
persuaded that those " field-pumpkins " rumbling down 
the attic stairs, did not give more innocent merriment to 
any listener on the eventful night, than to us old boys 
that day in Devon. Of course we had our little obser- 



UNDER THE ROOF. 297 

rations to make about our old friend Judkins and his 
rectorship ; and if they were not altogether such as his 
lady admirers of the parish (of whom I am told he has 
a warm galaxy) might commend, they were at least 
honest and cheery, and respectful to the man, and still 
more respectful, I trust, to the great cause in which he 
is a worker. 

Afterward, as our hilarity subsided somewhat, we 
fell into talk about our own personal history a subject 
which, so far as I have observed, is apt to command, 
whenever approached, a certain degree of seriousness. 
It is all very well to be merry at the recollection of 
some old school-mate, who has recklessly married and 
gone astray, or of one who is putting all his thews and 
muscle to the strain of a contest with some great giant 
of worldly trouble (it mattering very little whether the 
giant is imaginary or real) or of another, floating 
about in weary idleness and bachelorhood, seeming 
very chirruppy on the surface a surface which is apt to 
gloss over a great many tormenting fires. This sort of 
observation, as I said, we can conduct with a certain 
degree of cheery warmth and abandon ; it concerns 
our neighbors gold fields, not ours ; but when we 
come to compare notes about the value of our own 
working veins, and to confess the small weight and 
richness of ore we have brought up after all our digging, 
it breeds a seriousness. "VYe smile at thought of the 
13* 



298 SEVEN STORIES. 

rector in connection with his boyish wildness ; but have 
we any rectorship any parish that looks to us for guid 
ance ? We crack our little jokes at mention of poor 
Tom Steady fighting wearily his long battle with the 
world with wife and children tugging at his skirts ; 
have we any such battle to fight? or if we had, should 
we fight it as patiently as he ? 

There was not very much to interest in my part of 
the discourse, into which the current of our chat fell, 
there upon the Devon coach since up to that date, I 
had been living only a drifting life of invalid vagabond 
age. The rubicund face of Barton told a different sto 
ry. He was, if I remember rightly, concerned in some 
manufacturing interest near to the old town of Modbury ; 
he had a pleasant cottage thereabout among the hills, to 
which he gave me a very cordial invitation. 

I rejoiced in his pleasant establishment : he must be 
married of course ? 

" Yes ," he says, with some coyness " mar 
ried ; " and he continues in a lowered tone, and with 
an embarrassment, I thought, in his manner " there 
are some inconvenient circumstances however : to tell 
you the truth, my wife is not living with me at present ; 
so if you drive over, I can give you only a bachelor 
welcome." 

" Ah ! " (what could I say more ?) 

There is a pause for a while in our talk. At length 
Barton breaks in : 



UNDER THE ROOF. 299 

"Looks awkwardly, I de say?" 

"Well it does." 

4 It is awkward," said he, with some feeling ; " it 
worries me excessively." 

" I m not surprised," I ventured to say ; but farther 
than this I made no observation. If there is one bit of 
counsel which is absolutely sound, both for friends and 
strangers, it is never to meddle with quarrels between 
husband and wife ; domestic troubles are a great deal 
more apt to cure themselves than they are to be cured 
by outsiders. I was not sorry to find that, by the time 
the conversation had reached this critical stage, the 
coach had drawn up by the inn-door, near to the mar 
ket-cross of the old town of Totness, to which place I 
had booked myself. I shook hands with my newly- 
found acquaintance, promising to pay him an early visit. 

It was quite certain that he was not growing thin 
under the worry ; I think I never met with a better 
candidate for acceptance by the Life Insurance people. 
Presentable withal ; not over six and thirty at the 
outside ; amiable in his expression though this to be 
sure is a very doubtful indication of character. Possi 
bly the wife was a victim to the entertainment of jealous 
fancies ; for I could not but admit, that there was a 
good deal of the air of a gallant, gay Lothario/ about 
my friend Barton. 

I think I must have passed a fortnight or three 



300 SEVEN STORIES. 

weeks at a little village in the neighborhood strolling 
up and down the hillsides that are kept constantly be- 
greened by a thousand irrigating streamlets, indulging 
in an occasional idle canter along the country roads ; 
and once, at least, whipping a lazy meadow-stretch of 
the Ernie river with tackle I had borrowed at the inn ; 
and long ago as the visit was made, I think I could find 
my way now to a certain pool, not far below the Erme- 
bridge on the Modbury road, and within sight of Fleet- 
wood House, where upon a good day, and with a good 
wind at one s back, I think an adroit fly-fisher might be 
very sure of a pound strike/ 

But even such pleasant employment did not drive 
wholly out of mind Barton, his solitary home at Clum 
ber cottage, and my promised visit. So I named a day 
to him by post, and received a warm reply setting 
forth however his request that I would make " no allu 
sion to the unpleasant circumstance mentioned in the 
coach-drive more particularly as he was rated by all the 
members of his present establishment, and by the neigh 
borhood, only as a gay bachelor. Bating this little awk 
wardness," he continued, in this note, " I shall hope to 
give you a fricassee that will equal that of the old chef de 
cuisine under whose presiding curls and cap we broke 
bread together last." 

I drove down in a jaunty dog-cart with which they 
equipped me at the inn. Clumber Cottage was neither 



UNDER THE ROOF. 301 

a large nor a pretentious establishment ; there was a 
tidy array of gravel walks ; great piles of luxuriant rho 
dodendron and Spanish laurel ; a gray stone cottage 
with its flanking stable, half hidden in a copse of ever 
greens ; cosy rooms with a large flow of sunshine into 
their southern windows ; a perfect snuggery in short, 
where I found as hospitable welcome as it was possible 
for a single man to give. 

I shall not dwell upon the strolls and upon the talk 
we indulged in on that mild February day. The course 
of neither threw any new light upon the matter which 
had so piqued my curiosity. A snug and quiet dinner 
with its salmon, its haunch of exquisite Dartmoor mut 
ton, its ruby glow of sherry in the master s cups, and its 
fragrant bouquet of Latour chased away the early hours 
of evening. A tidy waiting maid attended us, whose 
face, I am free to confess after a good deal of not in 
curious observation, was of a degree of plainness which 
must have proved satisfactory to the most capricious and 
despotic of wives. 

I bade, as I supposed, a final adieu to my host next 
morning, and set off on my return to Totness, and 
thence to Exeter. Barton had undoubtedly made a ter 
ribly false step not of a character to be talked of ; and 
though I pitied him sincerely, I could not help thinking 
that he wore his disappointment with extraordinary res 
olution and appetite. 



802 SEVEN STORIES. 

The cold fogs of Exeter, a cough, and the advice of 
a friendly physician, drove me back again to one of those 
little bights along the Channel shore where the snn 
makes an almost Mediterranean mildness even in win 
ter. Ten days after my dinner with Barton, I found 
myself established in two delightful rooms just under 
the roof of a lodging house in Torquay. Vines clam 
bered over the windows, and shook their tresses of rich 
ivy leaves on either side, as I looked out upon the bay, 
which lay below fair, and clear and smooth, with a score 
or more of fishing boats lying drawn up on the lip of the 
sands by Paignton, and beyond. This cosy wintering 
place for delicate people, is in fact so nestled into the 
flank of a protecting circuit of hills, that on all the little 
terraces where cottages find lodgement, you may see 
lemon trees and the oleander blooming out of doors in 
winter. A harsh storm may indeed compel special and 
temporary protection ; but a sunny day and a south-east 
wind bring such budding spring again as can be found 
nowhere else in England. 

In such a place, of course, erery lodging house has 
its little company not necessarily known to each other, 
but meeting day after day in the entrance hall, or in the 
pretty green yard, set off with flowers and shrubbery, 
which lies before the entrance door. 

Upon the same floor with myself was another single 
lodger who was thoroughly English, I think, in all that 



UNDER THE ROOK 303 

regarded his moral qualities ; but physically, a very poor 
type inasmuch as he was a weazen, dyspeptic, dried 
man, who wore yellow gaiters, a spotted cravat, and a 
huge eye glass dangling at the top button hole of his 
waistcoat. His calls upon the waiting maid, Mary, 
were most inordinate and irrepressible sometimes for 
hot water, sometimes for cold the hot water being al 
ways too hot, and the cold not cold enough ; I think he 
would have driven the poor girl mad with his fretful- 
ness, if he had not anointed her palm from week to 
week with a crown or two of service money. I sometimes 
took my coffee at an adjoining table in the little break 
fast room upon the ground floor ; but after a series of 
resolute approaches I never came nearer to acqaintance- 
ship than passing a Good morning to him ; and even 
this he met invariably with so captious and churlish a 
rejoinder, that for very sport s sake, I kept up the show 
of civility to the last morning of my stay. I have no 
doubt that he entertained a certain respect for the Church 
of England and the prayer book ; but I am sure that he 
would have thought very contemptuously of Death or of 
any prospective Heaven or Hell, which were not occa 
sionally spoken encouragingly of by the Times News 
paper. 

Upor. the second floor was an elderly invalid lady, 
whom I frequently saw seated, in sunny weather, at her 
open window, or in her easy chair upon the grass plat 



304 SEVEN STORIES. 

below. She was attended by her maid and by her 
daughter ; this last a fair young girl, of most lithe and 
graceful figure, and with one of those winning faces 
which a man never grows tired of looking on. I think I 
see her now hovering about her mother s chair, offering 
a hundred little attentions now beating the pillows, that 
the position may be made the easier, now pleading with 
her to taste some new delicacy, now seated beside her, 
with one of those drooping willowy flats half hiding her 
face, as she reads for the ear of the invalid some frag 
ment from a favorite book or journal. Both mother 
and daughter wore the deepest black, and the widow s 
cap told only too plainly the cause of their mourning. 

Upon the same floor with these last, and making up 
the tale of our lodgers, was a young mother, the wife of 
an officer of the Indian civil service, who had brought 
down to this balmy atmosphere a sick child ; every day 
the poor little fellow, with a languid expression that 
promised I thought small hope, was rolled down in a 
Bath-chair to a sunny position on the shore of the bay ; 
every day the hopeful mother walked anxiously beside 
him, looking for a returning strength which never 
came. 

With explorations about the charming nooks of the 
little town of Torquay, and with not a little furtive ob 
servation of the personages I have enumerated, and to 
all of whom my quality of lodger permitted me to give 



UNDER THE ROOF. 305 

passing salutations from day to day, I passed a fort 
night. In the course of that time I had learned inci 
dentally that the lady and daughter who had attracted a 
large share of my observation, were the widow and 
child of a Colonel Wroxley who had been killed or 
reported missing, in the India service (I think it was 
about the time of the Affghan war) . The blow, wholly 
unexpected, had almost crushed the wife, who was pre 
viously in delicate health, and who had now come with 
her only child to struggle under that balmy atmosphere 
against her misfortune. Upon her first arrival, I was 
told, she had frequently enjoyed the promenade along 
the sands ; but to the great grief of the daughter, she 
had now given up these little excursions, and relapsed 
into a state of despondency and listlessness which grew 
every day more decided. The daughter at the instiga 
tion of both mother and physician tore herself away for 
an hour each evening for a stroll along the beach, some 
times alone, and sometimes attended by a young ac 
quaintance from a neighboring cottage. 

Now it happened one day, toward the end of my 
first fortnight of stay, as I was returning from my 
usual afternoon tramp, that I caught sight before me in 
the dusk, of this fair young girl who had so enlisted 
my admiration and sympathy accompanied by a gen 
tleman whose bearing toward her, and whose familiarity, 
should have been that only of an accepted lover. I 



306 SEVEN 8TOHIE8. 

quickened my pace as they drew near the gateway to 
catch a fuller sight of this stranger. As I did so, they 
suddenly turned to double upon their walk again ; and 
I cannot tell what horror and disgust came over me 
when I saw that her attendant was none other than 
Barton ! He knew me at once, but met me with a sur 
prised and embarrassed manner ; and I dare say that 
my own was equally embarrassed, and I am quite sure, 
not very cordial. He expressed his wonder at finding 
me still in Devon, asked my address, and passed on. 

I had however no call from him the next day, or on 
any subsequent day. Miss Wroxley met my salutation 
next morning with a deep blush ; but I saw in her the 
same loving, gentle, unwearied care for her invalid 
mother. That so lovely a creature should become the 
victim of a scoundrel was a thing too terrible to think of. 

It was plain now the cause of his domestic infelici 
ty ; the man must be a rou6 of the worst description. 
I could think only with disgust and abhorrence of my 
intercourse with him, and of my day s visit at Clumber 
Cottage. I found myself reckoning up, as nearly as I 
could, his old habitudes and tendencies at school ; and 
it seemed to me plainly enough that they all had a lean 
ing toward the worst forms of baseness. I even thought 
of making a confidant of the weazen-faced gentleman ; 
but when I saw him shuffling into the breakfast room 
with his pinched hungry look, and heard his captious 



UNDER THE ROOF. 307 

&lt;; Good morning," and saw him thrust his glass into the 
socket of his ey for a new gloat over some prowess of 
" my Lord Aberdeen" or of " my Lord Darby" I re 
lented. 

Matters remained in this state I seeing no more of 
Barton when one morning I became conscious of an 
excitement pervading the whole household. The eyes 
of the maid fairly twinkled ; 4 boots even was full of 
glee ; the poor mother, whose child was near death, 
wore an expression of tranquil pleasure, in her anxiety ; 
but, most of all, the change showed itself in Miss Wrox- 
ley, whose face as I caught sight of it from the window, 
was fairly radiant. 

It was explained to me when I went below : news 
had come that Colonel Wroxley, the father, was not 
killed, but had escaped just now from a long captivity, 
and was safely on his way for England. The wife only, 
did not share in the joy ; her hopes had been too deeply 
shattered ; a hint alone of the possible truth had been 
conveyed to her by her daughter ; but even this had 
been repulsed with a shudder of disbelief, and an en 
treaty that she might hear no more of such rumors, 
which had appalled the poor girl. The physician upon 
his morning visit had declared that the communication 
of such news, if urged upon her acceptance, in her pres 
ent state of health, might give a shock that would be 
fatal. 



303 SEVEN STORIES. 

Meantime the husband is approaching England ; the 
poor lady does not rally ; a dozen different plans are 
devised to prepare her for the strange revulsion of feel 
ing ; but they all fail of accomplishment ; at the least 
approach to the forbidden topic, she refuses, in a tem 
pest of despair, all hearing. 

Barton I have not met again ; but on one or two 
occasions, when Miss "Wroxley has returned after dusk 
I have observed her lingering at the wicket, and have 
heard a male voice at the parting. Once or twice too, 
my eye has fallen upon a letter in the post-man s bud 
get for "Miss Wroxley" written in a hand I know 
only too well. There can be no doubt that he is making 
his way insidiously indeed has made it already) 
into the full affections of this sweet girl. It can be no 
affair of cousinship ; else, why this avoidance of the 
mother and of the house ? why the avoidance of me ? 

Upon a certain morning somewhat later, the house is 
stirred again by the intelligence that the little fevered 
boy is dead. The mother s grief is violent and explo 
sive. The poor wan creature who has lingered so long 
doubtfully between night and day, is at length placidly 
stretched in sleep. Yet the mother cannot abide the 
change from fevered pain to eternal quietude. Her 
noisy grief stirs the heart of her invalid neighbor. At 
last at last, there is a heart that mourns, as she has 
mourned. The quick sympathy tells upon every fibre 



UNDER THE ROOF. 309 

of her being. She must join tears with this bereaved 
one. She insists upon going to her ; she finds a strength 
she has not found this many a day. It is even so ; we 
are tied to life, and find capacity for endurance, more 
in companionship of grief, than in any companionship 
of joy. 

The physician shrewdly perceives that advantage 
should be taken of this exaltation of feeling for commu 
nicating news of the speedy return of the husband. The 
willing daughter receives the needed instructions. She 
bounds toward her one day as the mother returns from 
her errand of mercy throws herself in her arms " It 
is true, mamma, it is true : He is alive and we shall see 
him again ! " 

" My poor child what do you tell me ? " 

u Time true, mother : he is alive, he is on his way : 
there is a letter in his own hand that tells us." 

And the woman bows her head over her child " My 
God, I thank thee ! " 

" No faltering now, mother ; your poor friend with 
her dead boy by her, needs all your strength all your 
repose to cheer her. Don t desert her." 

A little rally a deadly nervous tremor one wild 
gush of tears, and the conquest is made. 

" And now the letter, my darling, the letter 
quick, give me the letter ; these old eyes must spell it 
out." 



310 SEVEN STORIES. 

Can it be that a new and deadlier grief hangs threat 
ening over this family that courage and strength come 
so suddenly, for the strain ? 

I had the pleasure of witnessing the arrival of Col. 
Wroxley before my leave of that delightful town of 
Torquay. A tall swarthy man, bronzed by those fierce 
suns of India, firmly knit in muscle and in temper a 
man whose will I thought would be an iron one, but 
whose heart under it though making little demonstra 
tion might sometimes melt like iron in a furnace ; a 
man to be trusted not lightly provoked above all, a 
man to be obeyed. 

It seemed to me that such a protector perhaps 
avenger might some day be needed. 

The little boy is buried ; we had all followed him to 
his last sleeping place upon a sunny spot of the hill-side ; 
the mother is taking on a calm courage ; the widow s 
caps are abandoned, and I see the figure of the colonel s 
daughter flitting under the trees, of a mild evening, clad 
all in white. A sober cheerfulness is growing upon 
all the household with one marked exception. The 
daughter, at the first so radiant with joy at the father s 
return, is wearing day by day a more disturbed look. 
There is a fitfulness in her manner which has not be 
longed to her. I see her less often with her young 
companions. And I am somehow conscious of the 
presence of some party hovering about the shades of 



UNDER THE ROOF. 311 

the hill-road at evening eager to snatch a word to 
multiply promises to fasten a deeper hold upon her 
affections. 

It is plain that the father sees this altered condition 
of his daughter s feeling, and in his awkward, soldierly 
way, endeavors to brighten her spirits. And he enters 
upon the task with all the more eagerness, since he has 
already in days past laid his iron rule against what he 
had judged her caprices. But the story of his own wife s 
immeasurable grief has opened his eyes to the depth and 
breadth of that law of the affections which no mere ex 
ercise of authoritative will, whether outside or within, 
can bound or measure. No man s affections much less 
woman s can be ordered to the front/ The auto 
crat of Russia, magnanimous as he is, in many of his 
designs, is wearying and bloodying himself against this 
rule of our nature, all over the Polish plains. 

I have said that the colonel in other days had over 
ruled the daughter s caprice. A certain young acquaint 
ance of his and son of an old friend, who had been at 
tracted as who had not by the graces of his daughter, 
the colonel had fixed upon with quite military resolve, 
as his future son-in-law. He had studied his character 
well ; he was worthy ; he was every inch a soldier ; he 
would make his daughter happy ; and Annie must look 
upon the matter as settled. 

The mother had expostulated ; but the soldier s fiery 



312 SEVEN STORIES. 

will, and her exalted sense of duty brought her to ca 
pitulation. The news of the colonel s death, instead of 
giving freedom to the child, had inspired the mother 
with an insensate wish to carry out to the last degree 
the wishes of the father. God had made her the lega 
tee of the colonel s uncontrollable will. 

But now this barrier to the parental confidence was 
removed. The young aide-de-camp had been killed in 
battle. What could mean then those tears that fitful- 
ness that overcasting shadow of trouble ? I felt that 
a catastrophe was approaching. And it came. 

But the letter that announced it did not reach me 
until I had left Torquay. I was at the Albemarle, Lon 
don, when this exultant note was handed me post 
marked Modbury from Barton : 

" MY DEAR SIR, 

" You must have thought I treated you very 
scurvily. Annie thought it best however that I should 
not call at your lodgings. We had been privately mar 
ried a year before. Though I ought not to say it, the 
colonel s return to life was something of a damper to me ; 
but he knows it all now, and is thoroughly reconciled. 
I can show him a rent-roll from my little ventures here 
about, that is larger than his colonel s pay. We are all 
at Clumber Cottage happy of course. 



UNDER THE ROOF. 313 

" If you will run down to pass a day with us, I will 
give you something better than the old bachelor greeting. 

" Truly /rs." 

I was not a little taken aback by this cheery letter. 
I began to reflect again upon the old school-boy qualities 
which I thought I had seen developed in him. They 
were not so bad after all. 

Barton was a good fellow. 

How easy it is to count up a man s bad tendencies 
and give him a character that shall blast him, and do 
honor to our discernment ! How much of this are we 
doing every day ! And yet it is quite as easy to 
reckon a man s good drift, and honor him accordingly. 
We are all bad enough to be sure ; but I do not think 
the cynics, or the crazy partisans, will make us any the 
better by overcasting and by blackening what good is 
in us. 

I never hear a man rashly and wantonly abused 
in fact, scarce ever read my morning paper but I 
think with compunction of my sins in that direction, at 
my quiet lodgings Under the Roof, in the town of Tor 
quay. 



314 SEVEN STORIES. 



FINI A L. 

THUS far the memories suggested by my little note 
books have carried me, until I have reached the 
last half-story, lying under the roof. 

I put them back now upon their corner of the Li 
brary shelf hoping they will have opened the way to 
the hearts of some new friends, and not rebuffed the 
kindly spirit of such old ones as I claimed years ago. 

The little books shall have a long rest now : and 
whatever I venture upon in future, in an imaginative 
humor, shall have its seat nearer home. It is not so 
much in way of apology, or of promise, that I say this, 
as it is for the adjustment of some neat finial for the 
peak of the roof of my building of SEVEN STOBIES. 




MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD. 

BT 

DOXALD G. MITCHELL. 

1 Vol. 12rao., on Laid Tinted Paper. Price $1 60. 

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" The cultivation of the scholarly gentleman shows itself In every page, 
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and easy movement of the author s style, the graceful and delicate transi 
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pen, and the unaffected yet chastened pathos into which he rises for a mo 
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is fitted to give perpetual delight to the cultivated reader, and to be itself an 
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